Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Attorney for his response. I wish to exercise an abundance of caution and ensure that there be no misunderstanding about the position that I have expressed in relation to female genital mutilation. No-one in this House condones it; nobody regards its carrying out on a woman or a child to be acceptable; and everybody in this House has played their part in the passage of those laws. In fact, I recall speaking on that legislation when it was passed. This House has taken a number of stands where it has deliberately intruded into areas where we have complex and overlapping practices of traditional culture and we have said that some are no longer permissible under our law.

But the Attorney appears to miss the fundamental thrust of the point I raise, because I have asked for him to consider and respond to this proposition: is there a difference in his mind between a mother, coming recently to Australia from the Horn of Africa, perhaps as a displaced person or refugee, who, believing that it is in the interests of her child, carries out such a procedure—and remember most people who carry out these procedures are women—and a person who, without any such cultural understanding, as an act of cruelty seizes a child and inflicts such a horrible and mutilating wound upon them? I cannot believe that the Attorney says that each must be punished alike. If the Attorney holds such a view, I regard him as not having a moral base.

Question agreed to.

See this speech in context