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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4256 ..

MR STANHOPE: And victims of sexual assault. Yes. Right. We have got through the first 0.5 per cent of the population. There is just 99.5 per cent left and they do not rate. They do not rate in this hierarchy. This is simply not acceptable. I cannot believe that this Government is setting up a scheme for an elite and leaving the rest of the community, the mums and dads, the kids and the shop assistants to go without. They are not deserving of the same level of care and attention.

Ms Tucker: A pity they do not know Dave, eh?

MR STANHOPE: I sympathise with Ms Tucker, and my response was basically the same. This is where this whole process is just ridiculous. As a result of Mr Rugendyke's amendments we have Ms Tucker, in an effort to defend the rights of some other people within the community, in an act of desperation almost, forced to seek to include victims of domestic violence, another group of very needy people, and then also, in a general provision, to say, "Look, this is just not fair; it is just not right". So Ms Tucker then proposes a second group of victims, basically the rest.

We are in this absurd situation. Once we set down on this path of deciding that the police, the ambulance drivers and the firefighters are so incredibly deserving that only they should have access to a pain and suffering component of compensation, where does it leave the rest of the community? This just cannot be supported. The problem is that Ms Tucker is forced, out of simple principles of fairness, justice and equity, to move these amendments which get us back to where we are now. That is the effect of the amendment and it must be supported.

Mr Rugendyke, if your proposal in relation to the police, ambulance officers and firefighters gets up, there is no earthly basis on which you cannot then support Ms Tucker's amendments, and once we do that we are back to where we started. In fact, every thinking member of the Assembly must support Ms Tucker's amendments. There is no way not to support them. We then go back to the other issue raised by Mr Kaine about workers compensation. The Government is just so willing to jettison some of the principles it claims it has. There is the amendment to be moved by the Attorney-General relating to the exhaustion of workers compensation remedies. I presume we are not proceeding with that. That just goes out the window, does it? So we are abandoning that in relation to the police, ambulance officers and firefighters.

Mr Kaine: Have a look at proposed new section 34(1) because it further compounds the injustice.

MR STANHOPE: It does. Everything we do then compounds, down the track, and the whole Bill becomes a nonsense. It is just a joke. The whole thing becomes a joke if you accept this amendment of Mr Rugendyke's. The whole thing becomes appalling. It is an appalling travesty of justice in relation to all those people regarded by this Government as second-class citizens - the victims not worthy of support, the kids that are bashed up, the shop assistants that are robbed at the point of knives and guns every day of the week.

Mr Humphries: Jon. Dear, oh dear.

MR STANHOPE: You do not think it happens?

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