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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 561 ..

Mr Pratt: The UN is speaking a lot of French!

MRS DUNNE: I am speaking now; Mr Pratt will have his turn later. When it comes to issues like freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief, they beggar belief. It is absolutely absurd, in many ways, to try and protect these things. When you say you have freedom of conscience and you do not have anything in the substantive clause to define “conscience”, what is freedom of conscience about? Is freedom of conscience about refusing to participate in abortion if you conscientiously object to it? The answer to that is no, because this place legislated that right out of existence about two years ago. Is it about freedom to slaughter the infidels; or freedom to have one’s daughters mutilated? That would be an exercise of right of conscience in many places, but is it acceptable in Australia? I think not.

Clearly, in a civilised society, people can tolerate some exercises of conscience but not others. There is nothing in this legislation to say what those exercises of conscience are. Without qualification, this legislation is meaningless and exposes the ACT and its courts to a range of arguments that various forms of crime, up to and including terrorist acts, are all right because they are the result of the exercise of conscience or belief and must therefore be protected. Clause 14 is an absurdity. Without any constraint on this right, it means that it is open slather. This is the problem with almost everything in here. It is either undefinable, meaningless, open slather or all of the above.

The peaceful assembly is just motherhood. Before we have even passed this legislation here today, we have seen the right to freedom of expression curtailed by this Attorney-General, who is in this place today extolling the Human Rights Bill as groundbreaking in Australia and in the world. What did he do? He applied the gag. How pathetic is that.

The next one is the right to take part in public life. Subclause 17 (b) is the right to vote and be elected at periodic elections that guarantee the free expression of the will of the electors. The free expression of the will of the electors by their elected representatives was gagged in this place by the Attorney-General, who came in here and said that the legislation is groundbreaking; that he is doing all this to protect people’s rights. The legislation is meaningless. It was made meaningless and absurd before it has even been voted into law.

There is no reference in the legislation to what we might do with someone who is guilty of sedition. That is free expression; we can do anything we like because there are no constraints in this law and there are no constraints on the imagination of this Attorney-General. All he wants to do is create a monument for himself, and in doing so he has created an absurdity.

MR PRATT (10.26): I want to talk specifically about clauses 18 to 25. I find it disturbing that clauses 18 to 25 of the bill of rights, dealing with the rights of those participating in criminal behaviour, is far greater in content and detail than the section dealing with protecting those who obey the law—clauses 12 to 17. Clauses 18 to 25 have been almost lovingly padded. Again we see an inverse position reflecting this government’s priorities. Championing the rights of those who challenge the law seems to be far more important than protecting those who abide by the law.

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