Page 268 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
This piece of advice goes on to point out:
In Stanhope’s bill the child does not exist; harm to the “pregnancy” is the language. Consequently there can be no separate questioning of the mother’s assailant in respect of the child. The offence is of one character, an offence against the mother. Therefore if the mother is unlawfully injured, even killed, and she is pregnant, with damage to the “pregnancy”, then the usual legal reasoning prevails. The assailant is liable for all the consequences/harm that results.
The perpetrator of an unlawful act does not need to know the value of the vase s/he broke. If a person guilty of dangerous driving could see only the driver as s/he smashed into the other car, would we say s/he is not responsible for the small children strapped in the back because s/he did not know that they were there. This approach is arrant nonsense—
that is the advice that I have received here—
and would not be argued by anyone except for those who place no value on the unborn child.
That is the rub, is it not, Mr Stanhope? You place no value on the unborn. Like Canberra civil libertarians, you are in a cold ideological lockstep with lobbies that would seek to blur the edges of the debate about these very important issues.
In conclusion, I say that Mr Stanhope’s law is weak. Not only that: it is weak law which has been watered down to make it even weaker. Mr Stanhope is stuck on the hardcore ideological point about the question of the living entity. Clearly, he demonstrates that the pregnancy is merely a condition, that it is a material asset, that it is a material add-on, to the woman whom at least he is protecting. The Chief Minister has bent to civil libertarians and quite weakly caved in. Mr Stanhope’s law is at least better than nothing. The opposition will be supporting it today because there is nothing else in place, but it is extremely disappointing. As with his cave-in to civil libertarians on antiterrorism laws, which are therefore the weakest antiterrorism laws in this country, we find that for the same reasons he has thrown in the towel and we are now getting weak law instead of the comprehensive law which is required.
The protection of women in our community is of paramount importance and the protection of pregnant women and their unborn is of paramount importance. The attempts over two years to introduce meaningful law to protect that important component of our society have been wasted. Two opportunities to adopt legislation were thrown away and now we will have in place law which is at least better than nothing but is still weak. It is still weak and we have wasted two years.
We will grudgingly support this law. We will seek to amend it to make it strong, to make it more meaningful, but at this point the opposition is crying out that this is law which will have no teeth, this is law which will not provide deterrence at all to offences of assault against a woman and her unborn. It is a shameful law. Given the pressures around the country, a lot more could have been done by the Chief Minister, but he has failed dismally.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .