Equal Opportunity (Parliament and Courts) Amendment Bill

Final Stages

The Legislative Council agreed to the bill with the amendments indicated by the following schedule, to which amendments the Legislative Council desires the concurrence of the House of Assembly:

No. 1. Clause 1, page 2, line 4—After 'Parliament' insert:

and Courts

No. 2. Clause 3, page 2, after line 9—Before the current contents of clause 3 (now to be designated as subclause (2)) insert:

(1) Section 87(6a)—after 'sexual harassment a' insert: judicial or

Consideration in committee.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I move:

That the Legislative Council's amendments be agreed to.

I will speak briefly to this on behalf of the government. The amendments make provision for the equal opportunity processes in dealing with sexual harassment matters not only to include members of parliament, which is the original bill, but to expand it to include judges. This has been with the indication of the Chief Justice that, whilst he had initially indicated he felt that they have their own judicial conduct commissioner and that would be sufficient, the process that is referred to in the Equal Opportunity Act does not have a similar process through a judicial conduct commissioner.

In any event, he indicated that he would not have any objection to these amendments being presented by the Hon. Connie Bonaros to include judges, and essentially the courts and the parliament to then be covered by that. As the member knows, the only third group that remains with exclusion arrangements in the Equal Opportunity Act are local councillors and we have just dealt with that in another bill that is currently being considered by the parliament, so three strikes.

I want to commend the Chief Justice for agreeing to come into this process and give that opportunity to judges in circumstances where there may be some sexual harassment allegations between judicial persons, as we are with MPs and local councillors who are elected members.

We are in the 21^st century. This is important reform. I thank the Legislative Council for their consideration and the Hon. Connie Bonaros for her more detailed examination and presentation of these amendments. They are accepted by the government.

Motion carried.

Sitting suspended from 18:00 to 19:30.