Page 2125 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 22 June 2005
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magistrate who died not long ago, the late Kevin Dobson, in the ‘80s often saying; “The police are not here as blue punching bags.”
Accordingly, to enable proper protections to be afforded to our police force, there are a number of additional offences: assaulting, stalking and harassing a police officer; obtaining personal information about a police officer and stalking a person associated with a police officer. These additions were requested by the AFPA and were lifted from the New South Wales act. They are sections that the New South Wales police are happy to have. It gives them confidence that they are protected in doing their most important job. It is lacking in the legislation covering members of the AFP, who do an extremely important job for the community and who are deserving of proper protection and recognition from that community.
I present the Sentencing and Corrections Reform Amendment Bill and the amendments to the Crime Sentencing Bill. I recommend that the bills be referred to the Standing Committee on Legal Affairs. I think that may well be a sensible course. I commend the bill and the amendments to the government and the Greens for consideration.
Debate (on motion by Mr Corbell) adjourned to the next sitting.
Medicare
Debate resumed from 4 May 2005, on motion by Ms Porter:
That this Assembly:
(1) recognises the importance to the ACT community of maintaining accessibility to Medicare funded treatments and services based on objective merit rather than subjective value judgements;
(2) notes the negative implications associated with restricting Medicare subsidisation for In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) treatments on an arbitrary basis; and
(3) affirms its commitment to accessible and affordable health services for all ACT residents, including the provision of IVF, at the discretion of the individual, in consultation with their medical practitioner.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella—Leader of the Opposition) (10.47): This is the resumption of the debate from 4 May. We got through some of the debate but unfortunately were not able to finish this as we ran out of time. I spoke in this debate on behalf of the opposition and got through most of my speech. I will simply reiterate the three points that Ms Porter puts forward in her motion.
Paragraph (1) states:
recognises the importance to the ACT community of maintaining accessibility to Medicare funded treatments and services based on objective merit rather than subjective value judgments.
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