Page 1404 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2006
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prepared to say that, although it is committed to protecting children, in this particular instance we should simply overturn this notion of the need to protect children.
A child is a child. A child is defined as a person under the age of 18 years. Thank goodness our community and our society have a position that children need special protection. This government—in fact, this nation, this community—has accepted that position. But the Liberal Party says that 16 and 17-year-olds really cannot be trusted; we should be able to lock them up without charge and without trial because they cannot be trusted.
The inherent nonsense in this position is that it abandons our commitment to an international convention and the need for us as a community to express—
Mr Stefaniak: So are all the other states.
MR STANHOPE: Absolutely! They are, and they are wrong, and history will judge them as wrong. As surely as the sun rises every day, history will judge this period of lawmaking as one of the darkest periods in Australian legal history. I know that, Mr Stefaniak, and I think in your heart you know it. This is a dark period that we as a nation are entering.
Encapsulated in this legislation are the simple, cheap, weak abandonment of a commitment to children and an abandonment of the rule of law, any commitment to human rights or respect for civil liberties. It is one thing to abandon the rule of law and to enter into derelict arrangements in the context of our commitment to the rule of law, but added to that is a willingness to abandon that overarching responsibility that we as a community accept, and that is the responsibility to protect our children.
When you look at 16 and 17-year-olds, you may not regard them as children, but they are children. We, as a government, on behalf of this community, will not abandon our children.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (5.11): I feel duty bound to rise and follow up on some remarks I made during the legal affairs committee hearing where, rather oddly, Mr Stefaniak and I concurred on this issue. I am not going to vote for Mr Stefaniak’s amendments.
There is a very grave danger that my remarks will be interpreted in absolutely the wrong way. I have a total commitment to human rights. As I said during the committee hearings, I believe that the ACT legislation to protect the human rights of children should be extended. Because the ACT’s laws attempt to be compliant with human rights norms, they can be seen as a protection, not just for those in the ACT community over 18, but also for those under 18.
If the AFP, ASIO or some other federal government instrumentality is seeking to have a preventative order made on a person between the ages of 16 and 18, the prospect that they will decline to do so on the basis that they cannot do so under the ACT’s laws is laughable. It is not likely that Mr Ruddock or Mr Keelty will respect the ACT’s wishes in this regard. Why would they? They do not have a very good track record when it comes to showing respect for the legislative independence and integrity of the ACT.
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