The parties' stances on 'loathsome' law
The Parliamentary bill to have 'gay panic' defence struck from the lawbooks passed its first reading with unanimous support last night.
While the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill now goes through committee stages and two more readings, the political parties signaled their positions in speeches that were so closely aligned, with the exception of ACT, that a smooth passage looks likely.
In brief, the Government and Opposition speakers said:
National (Simon Power):
"The defence assumes that ordinary reasonable people when confronted with severe provocation will react with a homicidal loss of self-control, when, in fact, ordinary people do not."
"When the government is attempting to send the strong message that people must find ways other than violence to manage their anger it is inappropriate and undesirable that anger be singled out as an overriding mitigating factor that could be seen to justify conviction for manslaughter rather than murder."
Labour (Lianne Dalziel):
[The defence is mostly used by men, often when their sexuality is threatened...] "...when their partner has left them for another man or, as in Ronald Brown's case, they say that they have been propositioned by another man. My objection is that the evidence as to what allegedly incited this homicidal loss of self-control is entirely in the hands of the person who has silenced forever the only other witness to the event."
Greens (Kevin Hague):
"
The ongoing existence of this defence is a
signal that violently taking the life of a gay man is of less consequence than
of taking the life of another. That is obnoxious in the extreme. It increases
the actual physical danger faced by gay men, and it signals in the most graphic
way possible both to gay men and to everyone else that our lives do not have the
same value as the lives of others."
ACT (David Garret):
"The defence works for both sexes, for all sexual orientations and genders and that it is something that needs to be examined very closely. We are not convinced at this stage of the merits of abolishing the defence entirely. We will be interested to see what the select committee comes up with."
