Page 345 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 7 March 2006
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The Queensland government introduced a separate provision of an offence against an unborn child but it did not overturn those provisions within its Crimes Act, which are repeated in section 10 of the ACT Criminal Code in relation to the operation of the criminal law in offences against a person. Those are the facts. Queensland did not undo its version of section 10 of the ACT Crimes Act. It introduced a separate specific offence in a specific circumstance in relation to an unborn child. Certainly, they moved away from the position that has been traditionally adopted throughout Australia and other common law countries but they did not abandon the criminal law presumption of the operation of the criminal law as it applies against persons to the moment of parturition or separation from the mother.
So you are wrong about that, Mr Pratt. It is important that the record be corrected in relation to that because you have it out and about that, “Oh well, Queensland has done this. Queensland has walked away from this longstanding principle, so why don’t we?” Well, they have not. They introduced a separate offence but they have not walked away from the provision which applies throughout the whole of Australia in relation to the essential definition of a person as being a person or a life in being separate from the mother. And that is why, as we have said now repeatedly over the last three years, this government and no other government in Australia will legislate in the way that you propose.
We are being consistent with Queensland, the rest of Australia, the United Kingdom and other common law countries around the world who accept for very good reason that in relation to the operation of criminal law offences against the person, the person is a person at the moment of parturition, from the moment of birth, when they became a separate being, a being, a person in birth. We have done this to avoid the very debate and conflict which we are having here this morning. We will not agree and we will never agree, as we have not agreed for donkeys years, to change on this fundamental issue. That is why Queensland did not amend the law, as you claim they did, and it is why no other government in Australia has amended the law in the way which you wish that they would. They have not done so for very good reasons around these morally and legally complex issues relating to the meaning of life and the operation of the criminal law book, and the operation of the criminal law in respect of when life begins and how the criminal law should operate.
While I am on my feet I might just debunk the suggestion, which is continually put, that the government in introducing the legislation which we are debating today is responding to Mr Pratt’s flawed attempts to bring about change. As everybody knows, the ACT government over the last four years has been progressively introducing to the law of the ACT the entire Criminal Code, chapter by chapter. This was started by Mr Stefaniak and it is a job which we are continuing and which we will complete. This is being done chapter by chapter. It is a mammoth task. Mr Stefaniak, as one-time attorney, would know how massive a task the introduction of the Criminal Code is. It is the single largest piece of law reform being undertaken in the ACT. It is massive, it is a mammoth task.
The next chapter is offences against the person. And guess what? We are talking about an offence against the person—we are completely rewriting the Criminal Code of the ACT chapter by chapter by chapter, year after year; we have still got three or four years to go—and the chapter that we are up to is a chapter on offences against the person. Indeed, in the context of the last debate in relation to Mr Pratt’s flawed approach, I did
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