Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (30 August) . . Page.. 3833 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

(c) A report on the outcomes of the review must be presented by the Minister to the Legislative Assembly within six months after the end of the 12 months.

(3) This section ceases to have effect 12 months after the Act commences.

I think I am making it clear. I move the amendment [see schedule 5 at page 3911].

MR STEFANIAK (Minister for Education and Attorney-General) (8.10): Mr Speaker, I am quite happy to have a review, but I think to put it in legislation like that is a bit quick. I have just been given the amendment. I am not going to make an immediate decision on that. I have a natural reluctance, as the Attorney, to have something like that put in legislation. I have indicated that we are quite happy to have a review. We would do that within 12 months. I think that is the appropriate form rather than having it put in legislation. I cannot think of acts where this sort of thing is included. I have indicated that we will have the review, and I am happy if Ms Tucker wants to bring this one back at the next Assembly. I say again that we will have the review within 12 months. I am not prepared to agree to this amendment at this point in time.

MR KAINE (8.11): Mr Speaker, on this issue I agree with the Attorney. I do not believe that this is an appropriate provision to be built into the statute. There is going to be a lot of water run under the bridge over the next few months. At the appropriate time, if Ms Tucker is still here and she still wants such a review done, there are other ways of achieving it. They would be much more preferable to me than trying to embed this in the statute. I will not support this amendment.

MS TUCKER (8.11): For the information of members, we got this idea from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. We haven't invented the concept. We got it from there.

MR STANHOPE (Leader of the Opposition) (8.12): The Labor Party will support this amendment. I was just looking for the amendment. I think at dinner time we included in the Defamation Bill a government amendment, or Mr Osborne's amendment-I am not sure whose amendment it was-which required that the defamation legislation be reviewed.

Mr Stefaniak: That is right, but it was not as prescriptive as that.

MR STANHOPE: Well, Ms Tucker is a bit more thorough than the government. We did precisely this in the last bill debated and passed in this Assembly. This is reasonable, particularly in the context of the points that Ms Tucker and I have made. Despite what the minister said in his long speech, these organisations have not been consulted. As I said before, it beggars belief that we are in the process of passing legislation dealing with no more difficult, intractable and sensitive an issue that communities face than domestic violence perpetrated in the home. There is no more difficult and intractable issue in the social problems that communities have to deal with than this issue.

There are some organisations within the community that have a detailed, profound, specialist understanding of these issues, and guess who they are? They are the Domestic Violence Crisis Service, a service which exists for one purpose only, the Women's Legal Centre, the organisation in this community that knows more about issues that impact on women in a legal sense than any other organisation, and the Domestic Violence

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .