Page 344 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 7 March 2006
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pregnant woman and her unborn. That is our objective. That is why we are standing here today debating this bill, not for any other ludicrous motive that the Chief Minister might want to put upon us. I say to the Chief Minister that he should accept this amendment, which would put some strength back into his legislation and provide real deterrence, which would provide better protection to the pregnant women of our community and, of course, to the unborn.
Chief Minister, put this amendment back in, make your bill stronger and send a strong message, as the first law officer, to the community that offences against a pregnant woman will not be tolerated and that there are serious consequences for people who do that. If you are serious in your role, you will accept this amendment.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (11.50): Just briefly, Mr Speaker, I want to say that the Greens are not going to support Mr Pratt’s amendment—I am sure that he will be quite unsurprised—because it goes against the whole basic principle of this bill, which recognises that until the foetus is born it is a part of a woman and, certainly by law, not considered to be a separate person until after it is born.
Like many women here, I have had children in my womb; three. While I imagined each child until it was born—I do think that pregnancy is a lot about imagining—there is no doubt that the foetus was part of my body. I just think that his argument is a fallacious argument to put up, one with a highly emotive intention, and it distracts from the aim of this bill, which is perfectly straightforward, to recognise there can be harm done to a pregnancy in an attack, inadvertent or purposeful, upon a woman. I think we should try to stick to the issue.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Arts, Heritage and Indigenous Affairs) (11.52): Mr Speaker, for the reasons that I gave previously, the government will not support the amendment. Of course, I have given these reasons three times in, I think, the last two years in relation to the repeated introduction by the opposition of this proposal.
I need to correct the assertion that Mr Pratt has made in relation to the alleged move away by Queensland from the criminal law principle of life being interpreted to have commenced at the point of birth. Queensland has not changed the provision within its Crimes Act, Mr Pratt. It remains the case in Queensland, as it does in the rest of Australia, that the Crimes Act provisions in relation to offences against the person apply from the moment of birth. When a person is born, the person is considered to be a separate legal entity and those offences against the person apply only from that moment, from the moment of separation from the mother, in relation to those individual human beings. Queensland legislation—
Mrs Burke: I don’t think you are right there.
Mr Stefaniak: I do not think that is right, Jon.
Mrs Burke: Our advice tells us not.
MR STANHOPE: Well, your advisers are wrong. If your shadow attorney gets the Queensland Criminal Code out he will be able to advise you that you are indeed wrong.
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