Page 3986 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 9 November 1994
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MR HUMPHRIES (5.10): Madam Speaker, I realise that this amendment is not going to succeed, but I want to make one more comment. The reason that we increased penalties in this area, for most of this Bill, was to discourage people from doing certain things. We hope that, by making a penalty five times greater, we will send the message that, if you want to do this, you are going to have to pay a lot more for the privilege of breaking this particular law. The question is whether the professionals, such as doctors, welfare workers and the police, who do not report child abuse do so because they think the penalties are light and might change their minds because the penalties are greater. I suspect not. I suspect that the reason why those people do not report child abuse is that they, in many cases, make a professional judgment that it would not be in the interests of the child to report the abuse in that case. I understand from the professionals I have spoken to that that is a common characteristic. Doctors particularly feel that it would not be in the interests of the child to expose the child's parents or carers to the processes which inevitably flow, or very probably flow, when a report is made.
Those people are making a professional judgment. They will be making it on behalf of their patients or their clients. When they do so, the increase in the penalty may not be a discouragement to them. They may feel that they will stand by their decision. The increased penalty that they will face in the court might not discourage them from doing so. That is a great pity, I think, given the fact that the community as a whole, and in particular the Community Law Reform Committee, which has had the carriage of this matter, have not been confident about taking this matter to a much more aggressive stage at this point. Indeed, I thought that Ms Szuty was going to say, "We have erred on the side of caution". Instead, she said, "We have erred on the side of going ahead with this recommendation". Of course, "caution" would be accepting the amendment that I put forward to the Assembly.
Amendment negatived.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (5.12): I seek leave to move Government amendments Nos 3 to 39 together and to table the supplementary explanatory memorandum.
Leave granted.
MR CONNOLLY: I move:
Schedule -
Page 18, amendment of Chiropractors Registration Act 1983 -
Proposed amendment of subsection 15(5) (penalty provision), omit the proposed amendment, substitute the following amendments:
"Subsection 29(5) -
Omit '$500', substitute '5 penalty units'.
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