Page 701 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 23 March 1993
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I intend to support, and I think my party intends to support, the general thrust of what the committee has recommended and to accept that the Bill proceed with the proposed amendments. I do not pretend for one instant that that compromise will satisfy all in the community. Indeed, the very profound view I have come away from this process with is that there will be some who will be deeply hurt by contact that will be made with them. I am focusing here on this question of access to information again. They will be deeply hurt by contact that is made with them as a result of legislation going forward. There are some people who are desperately opposed to that happening in the context of their own lives and who will certainly not be happy with what we have done or we are going to do this week in the Assembly.
However, I also accept that there are many other people whose lives will be greatly enriched by having access to that information, and by making contact with persons to whom they are related, as a result of this legislation passing through the Assembly. I simply cannot say whether the net good that we do by passing legislation is greater than the net harm, but I sincerely hope that it is. I believe that the process we have now concluded in the form of community consultation has been just about as comprehensive as we could have made it, and I think that it now behoves us to proceed quickly to a decision and to relieve those in the community who are anxious to see some resolution of this matter one way or the other.
MS ELLIS (10.07), in reply: I would like very briefly to make a couple of points in relation to some of the comments made by speakers. I will start with Mrs Carnell. In my speech earlier this evening I made direct reference to the cooperative approach within the committee. I did in fact appreciate the reset date for finishing the report, but I believe that it could be incorrect to ignore the Government's position on this Bill and its progress since its introduction to the house. I think it would be quite misleading of me to ignore the fact that we had a particular position, and I am perfectly happy to remind people of that position whenever I have the opportunity or whenever I am asked. That in no way, might I add, is meant to detract from the approach within the committee, as I said in my speech. I believe that because of the approach by members of the committee we were able to come to the end that we did. It remains a bit of a moot point, I guess, whether or not a debate in this Assembly would have ever resolved these questions. We were not given that opportunity. That is just another small point I would like to make.
Mr Moore was thankful that we were able to have a committee hearing. I am sorry that he is not here to hear me say this. He said that he appreciated that the committee was able to fully consider the Bill. I can assure Mr Moore that that in fact did not occur. As I outlined, it took from 1986 to 1992 to create the Bill. In no way could our committee have possibly attempted to consider the full Bill in the time that we had. By agreement within the committee, the only course of action, in fairness to the Bill and to the people waiting for its implementation, was to concentrate solely on the issues that were brought up in this house and recorded in Hansard on 8 December and on any subsequent issues that arose through our submission or public hearing process. I want to confirm for Mr Moore that we did not review the whole Bill.
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