Page 695 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 23 March 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR MOORE (9.44): I take the opportunity to say a few words on this report. I would like to start - - -
Mr Lamont: Are you a member of the committee?
MR MOORE: No, I am not a member.
Mr Lamont: Yes, you are.
MR MOORE: There is an interjection asking whether I am a member of the committee. Yes, I am, but I was not for the discussion of the Adoption Bill.
Madam Speaker, I find Mr Cornwell's comments this evening ironic on two counts. Earlier today and in the notice paper he raised the issue of discrimination. Then almost his whole speech tonight was based on the additional comments. By the way, Mr Cornwell, I did refer to them earlier as additional comments. I find it ironic that, in complaining about how the press and the whole discussion of this report seem to have concentrated on gay rights, Mr Cornwell used his whole speech to concentrate on exactly the same issue. I congratulate Ms Szuty on raising that issue. Madam Speaker, if this Assembly decided not to discriminate and to include gays as possible adoptive parents, they would have to go through a very thorough vetting process, the same as any couple, to see whether they were appropriate parents for an adoption and whether such an arrangement was in the best interests of the child. So, in fact, there were quite good grounds for Ms Szuty raising those issues as part of her additional comments.
Madam Speaker, Mrs Grassby made a series of mistakes in her speech. She said that we are going to debate the Bill tonight, which of course we are not. Another mistake was in inferring that this Bill could have gone through before Christmas. Madam Speaker, that is total and absolute nonsense. She seems to have been taken in by the scurrilous rubbish that Mr Connolly was presenting at the time the Bill was introduced. Madam Speaker, the decision to send this Bill to a committee was validated by the fact that the committee has been able to fully consider, through further testing with the community, the full extent of the nuances and the intention of the Bill. I believe that we are going to see some 17 amendments to the Bill that have come out of this committee's report. That in itself says a great deal. I believe that we will have a Bill that is the best we can hope for. Last December we had a Bill that was very worth while and, in the main, worthy of support. And that is what it got - it got support in principle. But, because of flaws, we needed a bit of time and investigation to clarify and to resolve.
Mr Connolly argued at the time that the Opposition and the Independents - in fact, he put most of the blame squarely on Ms Szuty and me, as I recall - would hold up the enactment of this Bill, and he suggested that that was terribly scurrilous of us. He convinced some of the people who had lobbied so strongly over such a long period for specific changes to the Bill, and they became frightened that the enactment would be held up by this process. Let me tell you to what extent. Mr Connolly said - and I quote from Hansard:
One concerns this complete furphy about six months. I asked my adviser some seconds ago how quickly we could be operational if we pass this Bill tonight.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .