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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1721 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

interesting. Nevertheless, I support in principle what Mr Stanhope is doing here, after that small shot at him.

Mr Stanhope: I can give you a distinction, mate. I can distinguish it easily.

MR OSBORNE: I am sure you can, but I thought I would make the point. I agree with what Mr Rugendyke is attempting to do. I have no problems with parliaments introducing mandatory sentencing laws. In fact, I have been involved in it myself for adults. But it is very clear that this issue has created major problems for juveniles, and obviously Mr Rugendyke is attempting to right that problem with his amendment.

I must admit to being in agreement with Mr Moore as well on paragraph (3), not that I like admitting that very often, Mr Speaker. I have not had the opportunity to have a look at the Australian Declaration Towards Reconciliation. I know that a copy is being waved around in the Assembly, but I have not had time to have a look at it. I am sure none of us have, so I probably will not be able to support that either, Mr Speaker. I just want to make the point that my support for this motion is conditional on Mr Rugendyke's amendment getting up, because I will not be supporting it if it does not.

MS TUCKER (8.05): There are a couple of comments I would like to make. Mr Moore, if I heard him correctly, was concerned that it was possibly appropriate to talk about the convention on the rights of the child, and therefore he would be supporting Mr Rugendyke in this matter. But there are other international conventions at work as well. My motion, when I put it to you here, talked about the discrimination in effect, which is of course the language you have to use when you have a law that, as the Chief Minister in Darwin says so often, is the same for everybody; but when you see a law that has a particular effect which is discriminatory because it will be one class of citizens that is affected, then that is seen to be discriminatory in effect, so it is broader than children.

The other issue here that is really important, and I did raise this last time, is that members need to be aware of the impact of these laws on women. If these members are so concerned about children and cycles of social disadvantage, they need to know that these laws are meaning that more women are imprisoned. They did not used to be in prison because they were caring for babies and children.

Mr Rugendyke: I supported you last time.

MS TUCKER: I know. So the point is that adult women are being separated from their children as a result of this law and they did not used to be. So members who keep talking about cycles of disadvantage and the cultural problems for the Aboriginal community have to understand that they are making it worse if they are separating these children from their mothers. It is just as basic as that. I do not have the figures with me here, but I certainly did read them out when I had the previous debate on the mandatory sentencing laws. There has been an incredibly high increase of imprisonment of women and it is causing a lot of distress to people in the Northern Territory particularly who are watching families being more traumatised by these laws.

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