Statutes Amendment Bill

Members, we come now to Part 12. Part 12 is the debate on clauses 47 and 48, “Amendments to Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004”. The question is that Part 12 stand part.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I know that some of the language we’re traversing is similar to Part 11. I just wanted to agree with the Associate Minister of Justice in relation to the modernising of the language in Part 12, as well. What I did want to get—and this is a genuine, good-faith question to the Minister—is whether she, in now using gender-inclusive language in Part 11 and Part 12, thinks there’s a genuine benefit to using gender-inclusive language throughout all legislation. It seems to me like this is a genuinely, really good way of addressing really outdated language, but what I’m aware of, though, is that there is still none the less debate more broadly as to whether using gender-inclusive language in legislation is genuinely beneficial. I think that in this case, in Part 12, it definitely is.

I know that we’ve touched on some of the more kind of graphic terms in Part 11 and Part 12, but I did want to ask more specifically around the benefit and the intent of using gender-inclusive language and the rationale behind that, because I think that’s a genuinely good part of the modernisation of the language. If the Minister wanted to elucidate as to what that means in practice, that would be useful for the committee, and whether she, in her role as Minister, is also intending to explore just any other means to utilise gender-inclusive language for the purpose of legislation to better capture population groups.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In answer to the Green member’s questions, I think where we can use inclusive language as part of modernisation that we most certainly should, and there’s an opportunity here to do that. I’ve also just been given some information about the “certain person”. It’s not defined in legislation; it’s determined by the context of the law in which it’s used. The reference being replaced in Schedule 1 is a phrase summarising what section 138 of the Act is about. The “certain person” refers to the persons described in section 138, which is the impaired person and person with significant impairment. I hope that answers the questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the Associate Minister of Justice for that clarification. I’m sure the officials are giving me the advice that they have; I hope that it meets the requirements when it comes to getting bodily samples.

In terms of the amendments to the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004, a strange little thing is thrown up here—in particular, clause 48, the definition of “specified offence”. It replaces the very old frame of “defiling idiot or imbecile woman or girl” with “defiling certain persons”—still using “defiling”, strangely, but anyway. The interesting thing about this is that that phrase and a whole lot of other ones are actually offences under the Crimes Act 1908, right? The purpose of those clauses are that it’s a schedule saying “These things are not clean slated.” Now, the Crimes Act 1908 stopped in 1961 when the new Crimes Act came into force. So the prospect of anyone still alive having committed an offence—how long ago is that?—65 years ago is extremely remote.

The other thing is this: in exactly the same list, it says “the following cannot be clean slated:”—and members of this committee might be interested in this—“including unnatural acts”, and those are the old acts against homosexuality. So we’ve got a very strange situation where we’ve got crimes from pre-1961 which cannot be clean slated, including crimes against homosexual, you know, acts, that can be expunged. So I’m very surprised that when we come to do this Statutes Amendment Bill, we didn’t look at the old offences pre-1961 and say, “Well, let’s put a line through those. They’re essentially spent and offensive.” Rather than doing that, we’ve got a simple modernisation of the wording, but we’ve still got a problem that pre-1961 offences, including offences which are no longer offences and which we have agreed should never have been offences, cannot be clean slated. I find that quite problematic.

I see a member’s bill right there.

Part 12 agreed to.

Part 13 Amendments to Crown Entities Act 2004, and Schedule 1