Page 1643 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2006

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Mr Stanhope: In differentiating, you are discriminating.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Stanhope.

MR STEFANIAK: It is a fact of life that a lot of 25-year-olds are not terribly mature. There are some people of 16 or 17 who are emotionally mature but there are a hell of a lot who are not. As well as the very valid reasons Mrs Dunne has put in relation to this—there are very sensible safeguards in the commonwealth Marriage Act in relation to that—they are just contractual for indicating that one has to be 18.

Mr Barr: There are very sensible safeguards here too, Bill.

MR STEFANIAK: You make a nonsense of what you are arguing against because you recognise that in other areas of the law 16 and 17-year-olds are to be treated as children; that they are not to have the same rights, responsibilities and perhaps penalties as adults do. I go back to your anti-terrorism bill, where 16 and 17-year-olds are exempt. Nowhere else in Australia are they exempt but they are exempt here for that. So that is very inconsistent. I think you fail and completely miss the point of a sexual relationship and the ability to form a very long-term commitment.

I think there are some sensible checks and balances in commonwealth law. What you are doing here with just parental consent and then the ability of the Children’s Court to waive that is, I think, problematic. It certainly is if you are talking about longstanding relationships—and I thought that was what we were all about here. There is inherent inconsistency in what you are doing. You have shown that today in relation to another bill. Your argument is not super logical either—let us face it. You are really confusing. A longstanding relationship is not the same as having sex. We all know that people have sex at various ages younger than 16. That is not the issue here. We are talking about a permanent, longstanding relationship and the ability of two people to form it.

Question put:

That amendment No 5 be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the affirmative.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 10, as amended, agreed to.

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