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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4278 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

But let us assume you have that impression and do not want to report the crime. Do not front up to report the crime. Ask someone else to go and report it for you. Make a telephone call and report it. Write a letter and report it. What is so onerous about doing that? We simply ask that a person put the community on notice that that crime has occurred. What is so difficult about that, Ms Tucker?

Supposedly a person who has been subject to some kind of crime feels so traumatised and unable to confront the police that they do not want to report the crime to police and do not want to relive the incident in front of anonymous police officers, but they are prepared to go into the court and relate the events to the court and obtain money for doing so. It does not make sense to me.

In order to prevent rip-offs and rorting of this system - and we know there has been some element of that in this scheme - it is only reasonable to say to people, "If you want to claim from the taxpayer a lump sum of money for your injury, at least have the decency to tell us when you were injured by a criminal". It is hardly a lot to ask.

MR STANHOPE (Leader of the Opposition) (3.14 am): Mr Humphries can seek to rewrite reality or to wish reality was not as it is, but it is no good just wishing away the fact that so many women are not prepared to report to the police that they have been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted. That is a fact that you need to grasp. It is something you need to take on faith. You need to accept that a lot of women who are raped or who suffer sexual assault cannot bring themselves to go to the police.

Mr Humphries: They do not have to go to the police.

MR STANHOPE: I do not care. It is a simple fact of life, Mr Humphries, that they do not do it. You could design in your mind all sorts of stratagems by which they might get around this decision that they make not to go to the police. You could seek to speak for them, which is what you are doing. You are saying, "The silly things. Why don't they get a friend to go along for them or why don't they write a letter?". There are probably very good reasons, Mr Humphries, which you and I will never fully understand.

Mr Humphries: Can you give us an example? What reasons? Why can't they write a letter?

MR STANHOPE: I think this is so crass and so insensitive of you, Attorney, that you are sitting here and basically demanding that all women who are raped or sexually assaulted must go to the police, irrespective of their feelings about it.

Mr Humphries: I am not saying that.

MR STANHOPE: That is what you are saying. They might not be able to bring themselves to take themselves off to the police or to find a friend to take them off to the police. Perhaps it is a sexual assault in the family context. Who knows what the arrangement is? There are a million possible permutations of reasons why women do not go to the police or the authorities in relation to a rape or a sexual assault. It is a simple fact. Just think about how many rapes are not reported. We all know it is

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