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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 159 ..

I think parliamentary counsel have a done a good job there. It is not dissimilar from other excellent laws which were passed here not all that long ago in relation to transgender and intersex people who got into trouble with the police and had to be searched by a police officer of the sex with which those people identified. That is, if the person identified as being female, the police would get a female officer to search that person.

There is that precedent, and this amendment will overcome the problems that you have envisaged, not that, I repeat, I have ever heard of there being a particular problem. However, if there is—and I take you at your word there—this amendment would cover that. This is an issue that has caused some real angst in the community. I think there are a number of real problems there that you probably do not appreciate and I commend the amendment to the Assembly.

MR PRATT (11.51): I received some correspondence from a concerned resident in my area of interest who has a young daughter who swims regularly and is moving into competitive swimming.

Mr Stanhope: Where does she swim?

MR PRATT: I think down in the Tuggeranong area. He has asked me a question—

Mr Stanhope: Not covered by the legislation, Mr Pratt.

MR PRATT: I will ask you, Chief Minister, if when you wrap up you would clarify this issue. I would like to know the answer. He wants to know if his 11-year-old daughter, who is approaching puberty—and, of course, as are all girls approaching puberty, she is pretty sensitive about issues—can be guaranteed that, whenever she attends a public bathing area throughout the ACT, she is not going to be subject to a unisex functional area. I would like you to answer that, when you wrap up, please, Chief Minister.

MR STANHOPE (Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Environment and Minister for Community Affairs) (11.52): I went into this in some detail in my earlier comments, Mr Speaker, and I do not want to delay members. I think this is a mischievous debate and it is a debate that has been spun right out of context.

We have in the ACT—I did not do a count but it might have been useful if I had—I guess 100 public toilets. I would imagine that we would probably have a couple of hundred change rooms at different sporting facilities. It would be a couple of hundred if you counted up the gyms, all the ovals, the football stadiums, the basketball stadiums and the change rooms in school gymnasium halls. If you counted them all up, there are 200 or 300 sets of change rooms, a couple of hundred public toilets and six public pools. We have one rule for six public pools and we have a different rule for the 400 to 500 other places where people go to do such private things as change.

We have one rule for six public pools, the Public Baths and Public Bathing Act 1956, which was drafted and passed in 1956 to deal with certain mores prevalent in 1956. Since then, in relation to these other hundreds of change rooms and these hundreds of public toilets, we rely on the Crimes Act. We rely on the offence provisions in the Crimes Act that relate to offensive behaviour and indecent exposure. We do not need the

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