Page 1231 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 11 May 1993
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Mr Berry: I am warmer and cuddlier than Kate Carnell, the steely heart. She does not care about her own kids. Her kids are in danger because of this.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order!
MS SZUTY: While men can register in New South Wales and box in approved competitions while registered and not under suspension for injury, women need to apply for approval from the ACT Minister for Sport each and every time they wish to enter competitions. Madam Speaker, I feel that the procedures are clumsy and, if necessary, I would be prepared to look at the issue in the future if the number of female boxing competitions increased to the level where this created difficulties.
The ACT has also very sensibly allowed for its own codes of practice to be developed for competitive boxing. We in the ACT have a reputation for setting high standards of health and safety, and I feel that it is important and appropriate that this is carried through to the sporting arena. I would urge the Minister, in developing the codes of practice, to set high standards for safety and protective gear to be worn by boxers to ensure that we are addressing the needs of the sport. We need to regulate so as to promote the skills involved in boxing. I am aware that boxing is a violent sport; that its very nature means that people are going to be injured. However, by introducing adequate codes of practice and adopting the New South Wales registration system, we ensure that boxing skills are promoted and not the blood sport of bashing.
Madam Speaker, another part of the Boxing Control Bill which I feel I should mention as being acceptable to me is the disallowance period for the notification of a code of practice or a variation to the code of practice. Under the Subordinate Laws Act 1989 the period for disallowance would normally be 15 sitting days. However, as this could cause an inordinate delay in making necessary changes I feel that it is appropriate to allow the changes to be made subject to a three-sitting-day disallowance period.
Madam Speaker, what is not sensible or appropriate is the Government's attempt to single out one form of boxing, kick boxing, and to make that form of boxing illegal. The Government, in clause 20 of the Bill before us, seeks to make the sport of competitive kick boxing illegal. I see no merit in the Government's action, only the opportunity for what the Government sees as an unnecessarily violent sport to operate outside the beneficial and very sensible guidelines of the Boxing Control Bill. I, like Mr Humphries, have yet to hear a satisfactory argument for banning kick boxing competitions. The arguments to date have centred on the violence of the sport. However, the Government has the opportunity through its codes of practice to ensure that the welfare of participants is addressed and to ensure that adequate regulation of the bouts themselves takes place.
It has also been suggested that violent martial arts movies and videos give rise to expectations by spectators at these bouts that there will be a certain amount of injury and blood spilt. I would argue that by banning the sport and forcing bouts underground or over the border, where kick boxing is not banned, the Government abrogates its responsibility to make kick boxing in the ACT as safe as possible. The contestants, when given the rules and regulations which they must compete under, accept the dangers to themselves in kick boxing, the same as they do when they abide by the rules of other forms of boxing. If the demand for kick boxing competitions falls because spectators do not want to
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