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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (27 February) . . Page.. 612 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

It is extremely explicit. It is claimed that lap dancing is not part of it, but I tend to take the view that probably anything goes in these circumstances. It is clear that it is a pretty undesirable sort of activity from my perspective. When Mr Humphries first proposed this notion, it was my inclination to recommend to my party that we move an amendment to ban it altogether and not simply shift it out to Fyshwick. But that is expressing a personal view, and I do not know enough about the issue. I simply do not know enough to make a recommendation to my party, and I think the matter should be deferred for a time. I do not think there is any problem in that.

Mr Kaine: Why don't you and I go and check this out one night, Bill?

MR WOOD: Mr Kaine, if you would come with me - - -

Mr Kaine: I do not know any more than you do.

MR WOOD: We can make light of the issue, but it is probably the case, Mr Kaine suggests, that we do not know enough about it. I would like Mr Humphries to defer the matter. I was saying before I was interrupted by Mr Kaine that I do not think it is a matter that has to be dealt with as a matter of extreme urgency. It is not often that we bring a Bill into this Assembly and dispose of it within a week. I do not know whether I am raising it to a higher level of importance than it deserves; maybe I am. But I think the matter could simply be deferred so that we can have a clearer examination of all the issues involved and then vote on the matter.

MR MOORE (6.05): Mr Speaker, this is simply poor legislation. It has been done in a rush, and it seems to me that it has a series of mistakes in it and should be generally opposed. The reason it has been done in a rush is that somebody made a bit of a fuss about something that offended Mr Humphries's sense of morality or community standards - the sort of wrestling with issues that Mr Wood was talking about. In some way Mr Humphries feels offended, and coming to the fore are his wowserish tendencies.

Like Mr Wood, it has been a long time since I have attended anything like tabletop dancing or dancing where women are semi-naked or whatever. However, I must say that as a young man I certainly did, and I presume most people here at some stage or another have been entertained in this fashion. Perhaps as we get older and more mature we say, "That is not for me", but that does not necessarily mean that we should be saying, "And it is not for anybody else either". We have to ask ourselves what the real harm is that is being done in this case. There are very complicated issues, as Mr Wood says, that I am sure we have heard feminists argue as to why we ought not have this sort of entertainment and about the pressure that is brought on women in particular in these sorts of situations. But those complicated arguments are not resolved by announcing a wowserish approach in one week and then introducing the Bill the following week.

Sometimes, we have really important situations, and today we had one of them, where legislation has to be dealt with very quickly. In those circumstances, when there is a good argument, sure, let us do it; but this is not one of those times. It is not something that is ruining the fabric of society. It is probably not something that any of us even knew about. I certainly did not know about any tabletop dancing or naked women in

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