Page 340 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 7 March 2006
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aware of this and other members should be—the criminal law of the ACT and of every other jurisdiction in Australia has required one to be born in order for an offence against the person to apply to them.
In the ACT, this requirement is embodied in section 10 of the Crimes Act. The right to life provision in the Human Rights Act simply reflects the criminal law position and a longstanding position within the criminal law, not just in the ACT but in every jurisdiction in Australia, inherited indeed from the United Kingdom. Mr Stefaniak knows that and knows well the good reason and the rationale for having that particular provision in relation to the operation of the criminal law.
To the extent that Mr Pratt and other members of the opposition object to the bill because it does not create offences of murder, manslaughter, assaulting an unborn child, et cetera, their issue is not with the Human Rights Act, but with a longstanding requirement of the criminal law that one must be born, must be a person in being, before the law of murder, et cetera, can apply to them.
I should stress that this requirement has been the law in every Australian jurisdiction for donkey’s years because it gives certainty to the application of the offences against the person. That has always been the law. These provisions do not change the law. The Human Rights Act does not change the law. It is the law now. It has been the law for ever and a day in the ACT that the criminal law applies only to persons in being, and there is a very strict definition of a person in being. It is essentially, in the broad, a person who has been born. That is to whom the criminal law applies.
We do see in the responses which the Liberal Party make to this debate and we do see in the legislation which they tout as the legislation on which this particular provision was modelled, namely, Mr Pratt’s earlier bills, that essentially for the Liberal Party in this place this is a debate about redefining the meaning of life and when life commences. The law as it currently stands recognises that the law applies to persons in being; in other words, people who have come into existence, babies who have been born. The criminal law has always in every Australian jurisdiction and in the United kingdom operated on that basis.
The Liberal Party’s position in this particular debate and the Liberal Party’s position in relation to the legislation which they introduced earlier has been all about changing that longstanding legal principle around the operation and application of the criminal law to a person in being. So be honest about it. Have the integrity to say, “What we want to do is to change the way in which the criminal law defines life.” Be honest about it. Do not confuse and confect this interest in protecting pregnant women when your motivation is wholly and solely about creating a new definition under the law of—
Mr Stefaniak: A long bow there, Jon.
MR STANHOPE: No, it is not. It is not a long bow. You have been dishonest in your dissembling around this particular issue and your motivation.
Mrs Burke: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker, concerning the imputation by the Chief Minister.
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