Page 267 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2006
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We think that that is good law and we are disappointed that the Stanhope government did not look at the Queensland law as a benchmark and build its own law upon that foundation.
Mr Speaker, it is extremely disappointing that the Stanhope government, in order to avoid the tough questions about when an unborn child should be recognised as a life form, has taken the easy way out by only referencing offences against a pregnant woman. I will talk to the government’s proposed amendment in more detail later, but I will say before I move on that I have noted that the government watered down its aggravated offence provisions after civil libertarians highlighted concerns about the bill in relation to offences committed by a person who might not know a woman was pregnant at the time of an assault. This goes to the heart of the fault element of culpable activity.
The law, in the opposition’s view, is already weak. It does not contain provisions to enable the protections that we believe pregnant women in our society deserve to have. The government’s law does not provide the deterrents which are needed to send a very strong message right across our community that assaults against a pregnant woman are simply despicable and unacceptable and will be heavily penalised. What is the government doing at the eleventh hour of this debate? It is bringing in an amendment which will further water down its bill. I will talk more about that later.
I want to refer this place quickly to a very interesting letter that I received from a women’s group with legal input on the Stanhope government’s proposed law. Let me quote a few pieces from that. They say:
The proposition is extraordinary. It is poor law as one is responsible for the outcome of any unlawful act. Does Stanhope plan to revise the entire criminal code? Or only where the unborn are involved?
As Stanhope’s bill does not include the superior provisions of the Queensland reforms (that is, damage to the child is an offence against the child itself) but goes the woosy way of the New South Wales provisions (that is, aggravation of a charge for the offence against the mother) then he can’t have it both ways.
They go on to identify and pull out the strong points of the Queensland law, saying:
If a person so offended in Queensland then one would have to look at what that person intended in respect of the (a) mother: did the person intend serious bodily harm and the mother died …
that, in fact, would amount to murder—
(b) what did the person intend against the child: necessary question as the child is a subject of these provisions in Qld. If serious harm was intended then the same principle applies; if the child dies, it is murder. If the person did not know that the woman was pregnant but intended to seriously harm her, then it would be murder in respect of her but manslaughter in respect of the child who dies as a result of an unlawful act i.e. assault on the mother.
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