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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Wednesday, 10 March 2004) . . Page.. 954 ..

legislation, but does experimental research count as being under “the usual and customary standards of medical practice”? In many cases it does not.

Mr Pratt’s bill is unclear on all of these questions. In fact, the bill may threaten Canberra’s internationally respected research institutions, including the John Curtin School of Medical Research, as it would possibly have unintended consequences that might damage their ability to continue with the groundbreaking work they are doing in stem cell research.

In addition to the bill being vague, it runs counter to the principles of the criminal code. I note that Mr Pratt tabled his legislation before the criminal code passed into law in this Assembly. That means it does not contain the requisite clauses to be consistent with the code, and I have not seen any amendments for it do that. In addition, it goes against the principle outlined by the Model Criminal Code Officers Committee that defences that depend on other offences to be committed should be avoided. That goes to Mr Pratt’s proposed offences in subsections 42A (3) and (4), which rely on a further offence to be proved in order to secure a prosecution. The Model Criminal Code Officers Committee considers these offences to be unduly complex, confusing and unnecessary and that they generally congest the statute book. They are also likely to make it harder to prosecute, which I am sure is something Mr Pratt does not want.

The third reason I will not be supporting Mr Pratt’s bill is the principle that people who commit the same criminal behaviour should be prosecuted under the same law. It is not the place of a legislator to provide for different crimes depending on who the victim is. The judiciary properly does this during sentencing when the consequences of the crime are duly assessed to determine the appropriate punishment for the convicted offender.

Criminal offences should be framed according to the conduct of the accused. It is the violent behaviour of an attacker that is illegal, regardless of whom that violence is directed at. This is a fundamental principle that goes outside the scope of the bill that we are debating today, but I do not think we should start writing different crimes depending on who the victim is.

Some people believe it is worse for a man to assault a woman than it is for him to assault another man, but we have not created separate offences for that assault. Other people believe that beating up an indigenous person or a member of the gay community out of prejudice is worse than other types of assault, but we still have not created separate offences for that. Similarly, while people may agree that causing grievous bodily harm to a pregnant woman is particularly abhorrent, we should not be creating a separate offence for it.

Let me make it clear that I believe that assault on, or grievous bodily harm done to, a pregnant woman is utterly repulsive and the attacker should have the full force of the law laid against them, but we do not need a new offence to do that. We already have offences to prosecute people who commit crimes against the person. The correct place for judgments to be made about the seriousness of that punishment is during sentencing. If it is clear that grievous bodily harm caused a miscarriage, that would be dealt with extremely seriously by the courts and would likely attract a far harsher sentence than otherwise. I think Mr Pratt wants to make a political point, but that is not the way to make good legislation.

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