Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1378 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The National Committee on Violence in its 1990 report looked at some of these issues and found that early childhood experiences were the most significant. I think this is often overlooked by policy-makers. As Mr Moore pointed out in his introductory speech, a recommendation of this report was that corporal punishment in all schools, public and private, should be prohibited by law. The Social Policy Committee of our Assembly also unanimously agreed that corporal punishment is not a useful tool for resolving conflict, as it reinforces the idea that violent behaviour is acceptable, and there is a recommendation in the report to this effect.

I am sorry that the Government did not take the recommendations of that report more seriously. If we are to take the issue of violence seriously, we not only need to take a broad view but also must take a long-term view. I support what Ms McRae just said. It is about family support. It is about having the mechanisms in place in the community to assist families in trouble, to reduce the likelihood of violence being used as a last resort to deal with conflict or difficulties. As the National Committee on Violence noted and as I argued in my preface to the violence in schools report, we have a choice. We can pay now and implement programs to reduce violence, or we can pay later, and we all know that it costs a lot more in the long run to deal with the results of not taking action.

Robert Ludbrook, who is the director of the National Children's and Youth Law Centre in Sydney, pointed out in the publication Citizen Child that we also have obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In its 1994 report, The Progress of Nations, UNICEF pointed out that all countries that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child are obliged to protect children from "all forms of physical or mental violence" and that the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has taken the view that smacking children is a violation of the convention.

This reinforces the view expressed in 1992 by the United Nations Human Rights Committee that governments have a responsibility to afford protection to everyone from "cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment", under article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and that laws should prohibit the hitting of children by people, whether they are acting in an official or private capacity. A table in the UNICEF report headed "Is physical punishment illegal?" ranked Australia with the United States at the bottom of the list of 27 industrialised nations.

Australia is in breach of its international law obligations in not banning the physical punishment of children as part of school discipline. The Federal Government has the power to pass national legislation banning corporal punishment in schools under the foreign affairs powers in the Australian Constitution. It has shown no interest in doing so. In fact, I understand that there is a committee of that place looking right now at the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and that a Liberal member has expressed concerns about the whole document because it focuses too much on the rights of the child and not on the rights of the parents.

This is hardly surprising. It fits very comfortably with the other values of the Howard Government: "Let us go back to the 1950s, where everyone was so happy. Well, white middle-class males were anyway. Let us undo every step that has been put in place over the last 20 years to protect women, children, indigenous people and migrants".

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .