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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 538 ..

This shows the unnecessary and contradictory nature of the bill the Chief Minister is going to have passed tonight, which clearly states that it is not exhaustive of the rights an individual might have.

I thought the whole purpose of this was to encapsulate all these rights in one bill, yet this clause is contrary to the rationale the Chief Minister would have us believe is behind the bill—the need that he states for this bill. This indicates that there is no need for this bill; it says in black and white that this act is not exhaustive. Individuals have other rights. They have other rights under domestic and international law. It actually quotes from one of the main acts where the rights of individuals are listed and where quite regularly they are upgraded.

This Assembly has done that in relation to discrimination against gays and lesbians, same-sex couples, women who are pregnant who might not get a job and women who want to have a baby in the future who might be precluded from entering the workforce. There are a couple of recent examples in this Assembly of where we have amended the Discrimination Act to add to and improve on it. Some might not agree that they improve on it, but they are law now.

“Anti-discrimination”, “rights of persons”—this is a very contradictory clause. What says it all is that the real justification for this act—that it puts rights into one act—clearly is not the case and can never realistically be the case. I go back to our original premise: why on earth do we need this act? It is not just the common law that we rely on; it is convention and statute law, as this clause specifically states. There are statutes that deal with rights, over and above this act. This clause helps show what a nonsense this whole exercise is.

Clause 7 agreed to.

Clause 8.

MRS DUNNE (8.42): Clause 8 purports to prohibit not inappropriate discrimination, not discrimination on irrelevant grounds—but all discrimination. It purports to eliminate the act of making a choice. Everyone has the right to equal and effective protection against discrimination, and the crucial words are “on any ground”. The equal and equivalent wording seems to me that we “do not discriminate in our protection from discrimination”. It is an interesting philosophical tangle, and it could perhaps be termed the “Bertrand Russell provision”.

If we took this seriously—which no one would, because most of this bill is nugatory anyway—it would prohibit not only schools of a particular orientation, like a Catholic school hiring Catholics, or females from seeking female flatmates; it would also prohibit hiring a waitress with experience or a commissioner for revenue with qualifications. In fact, there would be no restriction to employment, public statements—nor any choice. We are not permitted to choose the attractive bride over the unattractive one or the appealing dinner guest over the guy who picks his teeth with a fork. We can make choices, as long as they are entirely random.

We already have a range of federal and ACT antidiscrimination legislation with exceptions and qualifications, which reflects the fact that it has teeth and that it is

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