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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1710 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Joh Bjelke-Petersen did not know what it was. I ask whether this government or the federal government know what it is either.

I said in the previous debate that sometimes the sovereignty of the person must take precedence over the sovereignty of the state. I say the protection of life is more important than a state or territory's right to decide minimum sentences. Many respected organisations have implored the federal government to stop the deaths of young Aboriginal children in Northern Territory and Western Australian jails by using whatever power it has to overturn mandatory sentencing laws. This Assembly should join them.

Let me now turn to the stolen generation. The denial that such a generation existed is an abomination. Is there such a thing as a teenage generation? Is there such a thing as an older generation? Is there such a thing as generation X? When does a generation start and finish? The truth is that a generation is a general description for a significant identifiable portion of our community at a given point in time.

The Australian people have decried this denial of the stolen generation as a cowardly cop-out. It is a qualification which does not belong in the current thinking of reconciliation. It is reminiscent of One Nation theory. It is stupid, incorrect, insulting, insensitive, and it should be expunged from the debate on how we move forward to reconciliation.

Was there a generation that went to war in 1914-18? Was there a generation subjected to the national service lottery? Was there a generation lost in Russia, and from the Jewish people in World War II? Of course there was. And there is a stolen generation.

Has the federal government said that there was no generation of stolen children from Britain? I do not think so. Yet the private schools of Western Australia and elsewhere can be held responsible for the atrocities experienced in those institutions in the 1950s and 1960s, and this continues. The stolen generation occurred in less enlightened times-I hope. A denial of the existence on the basis of a 10 per cent level of the population is an indication that the times of enlightenment are not yet here.

Let us recognise that generation, apologise for the injustice to it and weep for it. Let us not leave this for another generation to address.

MR STEFANIAK (Minister for Education) (5.50): I seem to recall that not all that long ago we had a debate on mandatory sentencing. I also seem to recall that the Assembly then passed a motion which required the Chief Minister to do something, which she duly did. In that part of Mr Stanhope's motion, we are canvassing old ground. On that occasion members made their views quite plain. The government had a position. I do not think the government position necessarily won. The Chief Minister was required to do something, and she has advised me and she has advised the Assembly that she has done it. I cannot see the point in going over old ground on mandatory sentencing laws. That debate has already occurred.

The government's position on that has not changed. As the Chief Minister said, I do not think there is necessarily anyone here who would want to see enacted in the ACT the exact laws that have been introduced in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

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