Page 1071 - Week 04 - Thursday, 1 April 1993
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then we will have no alternative but to take immediate steps to institute a legal challenge in the courts which will effectively outlaw all domestic violence legislation. This will have the effect of leaving many women and children vulnerable and unprotected in the whole Australian community.
That is what I take to be a threat; that if the Government does not accede to a demand for a change in the law - what I would see as a fundamental change in the law which makes domestic violence law quite meaningless - then they will go to the courts and they will "effectively outlaw all domestic violence legislation". "This will have the effect", says Mr Williams, "of leaving many women and children vulnerable and unprotected in the whole Australian community".
I took that to be a fairly threatening tone, and I take that approach to be, as I said, extremist ratbaggery. Members may disagree with me. Members who got the letter may not have taken that implication. But I think members would accept, when they hear this read out, that that is a fair implication for me to take from that letter. As I said, when I get that sort of extremist ratbaggery directed at me I politely decline the invitation. That is my standard practice when people approach my office and couch their demands in terms of threats such as "If you do not do this, I will do that", or "If you do not do this, I will go to the press". That last one is a favoured one and we usually give them the Canberra Times telephone number. That is the way that I respond to such suggestions.
Mr Stevenson then goes on to attack me on the basis that I said:
... my letter to the person who invited me made it very clear that we would not be repealing these laws ...
I think the letter he read out explaining our process of reforming and strengthening the laws makes it very clear that we are not repealing those laws. I must concede that I did not state in writing that we would look forward to a legal challenge which we would be confident we would win. I did not expressly say that and, if that is the basis for censure, I do not think any member of any parliament has much of a future.
The point of Mr Stevenson's attack is that I misled the Assembly in that what I said to Mr Williams was not what I said to the Assembly. What I said to the Assembly was that when I get this sort of extremist ratbaggery - a threat of legal challenge to effectively outlaw all domestic violence legislation, which would have the effect, in the words of the writer, of "leaving many women and children vulnerable and unprotected in the whole Australian community" - I regard that as a pretty extreme threat, and again, members may differ, but I think they would have to accept that that is a fair implication to take from this, and I politely decline the invitation. Mr Stevenson read out the letters and I think everyone would agree that they were rather polite. I said that I would not be attending the meeting, nor would I be sending an officer; that we were having our own series of meetings and he might like to attend them. Perhaps Mr Stevenson would have preferred that I robustly take issue with the threat of legal action, but when I get such letters, containing threatening material, I think it is better simply to politely decline.
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