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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 153 ..

I have been reviewing some cases in which the homosexual advance defence has been used where people have been not only bashed in the head but also stabbed and had items stolen from them. How can you then say it was a homosexual advance when you then steal things from a person you have just murdered, to try to sell them? In that particular incident the charge of murder was reduced to manslaughter and the defendant was sentenced to a minimum of three years. Three years for bashing somebody’s head in, then stabbing them and then trying to sell their video player!

I think that we really do need to reassess how we judge what is murder and what is manslaughter, and how the homosexual defence law has sat in our case law. I am disappointed that we have this omission from the opposition when I thought that Mr Stefaniak had originally responded quite positively to the suggestion. It appears that, when it comes to defending gay and lesbian people under attack, suddenly the opposition is not as interested in law and order and believes that we need to consider it further, when it is very happy to jump on the law and order bandwagon in relation to many other issues.

The scrutiny of bills report made comments about this law and it claimed that the changes to the Crimes Act proposed in this bill may not wholly reflect the intention of the law. However, I note that the provisions of the legislation act instruct the court to give high regard to the intention of this bill. I think the intention is quite clear: we are trying to remove the defence of homosexual provocation. As has already been pointed out, this is a difficult and complicated law, but it will be redrafted and reconsidered when chapter 5 of the criminal code is introduced to the Assembly, so we will have an opportunity to address further issues then.

However, I am satisfied that the clauses presented give effect to the intentions of the legislation, and that this is a crucial and necessary change that was brought to the Assembly more than 18 months ago. We cannot remove it. We have to include a provision so that people who are killing gays and lesbians in our community with such hatred can no longer get away with it because they put up the defence of homosexual advance.

MR STEFANIAK (11.30): I thank members for their comments. I am not going to drag members downstairs for divisions on something like that. Ms Dundas has made her opposition quite clear. She is also completely misguided. She is right on one thing: I do believe in prosecuting people who do the wrong thing. I believe that people who are convicted in a court of doing the wrong thing should suffer their just deserts.

Ms Dundas, people who engage in belting, killing, maiming or otherwise hurting homosexuals without any cause whatsoever deserve to have the full force of the law applied to them, just as anyone does who carries out similar acts against any human being. So I take a little bit of offence at what you said, but I think you just misunderstand me.

I have been involved, as a prosecutor, in prosecuting people for bashing gay men. I remember a particularly nasty case I had where four men lured some gay men from a public park on an individual basis, took them out of Canberra and bashed them quite severely. I am pleased to say that three out of the four were sentenced to terms of

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