Page 2055 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 June 2005
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evidence throughout proceedings. It is regrettable and unfortunate that that was the way things went. But we had to deal with that and often that meant having a fight when we were getting shut down—when ministers were uncomfortable and we were shut down from asking further questions that would make them feel more uncomfortable. If I have time I might come back to that but I want to deal with a couple of the issues.
Breaches of section 19 (2) of the Human Rights Act with respect to Quamby are of significant concern to the opposition. There is also the issue of over-18s or adults mixing with children, some it seems as young as 11. This is a serious issue. It makes a bit of a mockery of the Human Rights Act when we have the minister for youth and the Attorney-General saying, “Well, yes, we’re breaching the law but that doesn’t really matter. We are going to fix it at some stage but because there are no penalties it doesn’t matter.” This, essentially, was what the Attorney-General said in response to a question. Firstly, he demonstrated that he did not quite understand how international law works. He said:
The law did not change with the introduction of the Human Rights Act for us;
Well, that is news to the Canberra community. I would have thought that when you bring in a piece of legalisation the law does change. That is why you do it. International covenants are well and good but until they are incorporated as a domestic law they have no effect. This showed a certain level of ignorance. Mr Stanhope seemed to be saying that because there were no penalties it did not matter. He said in response to a question:
This is really quite a simple nonsense. Give me an example of a law that you are thinking of. This is not a criminal code. The Human Rights Act does not contain penalties. We are not offending against a law.
I guess the question is: when you breach the Human Rights Act, what are you doing? Are you breaching a law? If you are not, this should be explained to the Canberra community. It has always been suspected that this has been a bit of a toothless tiger, and the Attorney-General really just confirmed that for us.
We had the issue of section 76 of the Education Act and the failure of the minister to consult with the Non-government Schools Education Council, as she is required to do under section 76 of the Act. The additional comments in the response of Ms MacDonald and Ms Porter clearly do not go to the issue. The response was that “it did not appreciate the reasons as to why the Non-government Schools Educational Council could not be convened”. The minister put forward no reasons why it could not be convened. The fact is that the act was passed in March of 2004. So the government had a whole year to get its act together to have this council in place so that it could comply with the statutory obligations to ask for and consider the advice of the council in formulating its budget.
We also saw the failure to establish a working party in relation to Quamby. Recommendation 7 of the Assembly’s Standing Committee on Community Services and Social Equity says:
The Committee recommends that the Government establish a working group to examine the adequacy and appropriateness of the programs currently available in Quamby, having specific regard for the need to have:
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