Page 342 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 7 March 2006
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MR SPEAKER: It is not a point of order to ask people to be honest.
MR STANHOPE: Mr Pratt suggests in his presentation that the Human Rights Act and the born alive requirement in section 10 of the Crimes Act present no impediment to the enactment of unborn child offences, even though the model Criminal Code officers declined for good reason. I must say that I know Mr Stefaniak knows and understands, because I know he has studied it, that they declined for good reason. These are reasons that I know that Mr Stefaniak, if he were being objective about it, would accept. They did not make recommendations in relation to the born alive requirement in section 10 because they are aware of and accept the appropriateness of retaining those provisions, particularly as they apply to other areas of the operation of the law.
The government has stated repeatedly its reasons for not supporting the enactment of unborn child offences. We have done it repeatedly over the last few years and essentially, as any thinking person accepts, it is because of the complex moral and legal issues, on which there is absolutely no community consensus, that it raises and it has nothing to do with any imagined impediment presented by the Human Rights Act or section 10 of the Crimes Act.
With regard to injuries caused in utero, Mr Pratt said—and Mrs Burke just repeated it—that it is illogical that a person cannot be charged for homicide of the unborn child if the mother has a stillbirth, but can be charged for homicide if the baby is born live, even for a brief time. The answer to that, of course, is that this is how the law currently operates. It has operated for a significant period in that way in all of Australia and in other places, such as the United Kingdom.
This bill makes no change to the current law in this respect and nor should it. So for Mr Pratt and Mrs Burke, as they have, to insist that this is completely illogical and cannot be sustained flies in the face of the reality of the way in which the law has operated for all my life, and operates today, in the ACT and throughout the rest of Australia, and it operates in the UK in precisely this way. Essentially, the way in which the law operates is now regarded as illogical. But fundamentally the law is about delivering practical solutions to problems and this law achieves that.
MR SPEAKER: The minister’s time has expired.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Detail stage
Clauses 1 to 17, by leave, taken together and agreed to.
Proposed new clause 17A.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (11.44): I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name, which seeks to insert a new clause 17A [see schedule 1 at page 420].
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