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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (6 September) . . Page.. 2937 ..
MR KAINE (continuing):
I do not know how anybody could have voted for that bill. At the time it should have been called the "Some Victims of Crime Financial Assistance Amendment Bill" because it provided for only some people to be equitably treated under the law and for others to be inequitably treated. Surely Mr Rugendyke can see the error in that proposition.
It is not about cost. The government's argument has always been about cost. I think the government would like to repeal the whole act and have no act dealing with compensation for victims of crime. I am quite sure that would be their ideal position. I do not agree with that and nor do I agree with a bill that treats people inequitably and unfairly.
Mr Stanhope made the point that it cannot be said that a police officer carrying out his or her duty and who is injured in the course of that duty is in any way different before the law in respect of entitlement for compensation than somebody working in a service station or at a bank who is held up at the point of a gun and, in the process, perhaps is injured. Even if they are not physically injured, it cannot be argued that they have not suffered trauma and it cannot be argued that the trauma and/or the injury that they suffer is any different to what a police officer incurs in performing his or her duties.
So to argue that the police ought to be treated in a more favourable way than any other citizen in similar circumstances is just something that in my view cannot be sustained. I do not know how Mr Rugendyke can argue that it can be. I notice that to justify the position of the police he threw in the ambos and other people engaged in public safety. That was just a sop; it was just so that it did not look like the police and the police alone were receiving favourable treatment. But, for arguments sake, I have been told that no ambulance officer has ever put in a claim for compensation. None. So you have to ask: why were they put in there? They were put in there to cause a bit of a smoke screen so that policemen did not stand out as receiving uniquely favourable treatment. That was a ploy. Quite frankly, in my view it was a dishonest ploy.
I totally support what Ms Tucker is trying to do. She is at least trying to turn this inequitable bill into one that has some equity and fairness about it. The government might not like that, Mr Rugendyke may not like that, but I think that any fair-minded person in this place ought to accept the proposition that this bill needs to be changed to make it fair and equitable. If anybody intends to vote against that proposition, I think they ought to stand up and justify why they are doing so.
We who believe in equity and fairness should not have to stand up here and justify our position because we are speaking in the public interest. So let us hear from those people who want to persist with an inequitable bill and let us have on the table their substantive arguments as to why this legislation should be maintained in its present form. Cost might be a reason but I do not believe that that is sufficient reason to say that we should maintain the inequities and the unfairness that are in the legislation at the moment. I totally support what Ms Tucker is trying to do.
MR BERRY
(4.01): Mr Speaker, I just want to speak briefly. Other colleagues have done the argument justice. Mr Humphries tried to make some sort of comparison between the drunk's defence, which we have now ruled out in other law, and somebody going to a club, getting themselves sozzled and being smacked in the head in the process.
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