Alexander Marc: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee Third Reading 
Alexander Marc: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee Third Reading 
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MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 I thank the Chair for allowing me to speak. I know there was an intention to close the debate at this point but there are a couple of issues that I would like to address and particularly as I have a Supplementary Order Paper that addresses a couple of them I am very grateful for the opportunity of talking. 
My first point is that my Supplementary Order Paper deals with sexual grooming. I realise that it has now been overtaken by the Supplementary Order Paper from the Minister of Justice and I am grateful that he has actually expanded on my initiative. 
But the second aspect which is really at the heart of what I want to talk a little bit about—and it has been touched on by a few other members—is the widening of the context of what can constitute rape to I guess bring it up to date with what the public expectation actually is. It is regrettable that the definition of rape has not been expanded to include other forms of sexual assault—man on man for example or even woman on man which has on occasion happened. I understand the Minister’s appreciation of the comments made by some of the members to this line and I am just sorry he has not been able to find commonality or agreement with a number of members of the House who want to see this change happen. 
It strikes me that anybody who has spent any time with victims of crimes such as—well we would normally call them rape but now we have to call certain crimes in that category “sexual connection”. It is not really the same thing. I admit that the penalties will be the same and that is important but at the same time to tell a man who has been sexually assaulted by another man that that is not actually rape is an affront. It somehow puts it at a lower level of offending than rape. One gets the sense that there will be conversations in prison where people say: “Well at least it wasn’t rape.” Well in the public domain it is rape and that is the point and the law needs to catch up to the fact that that is how the public sees it. 
In one terrible case which was alluded to during the select committee process a woman had bottles put into her vagina and then men jumped on top of her cracking the glass. The kind of resultant damage to that woman not only the physical damage but the mental scarring is nothing short of rape. Even if the penalties are the same it is absolutely despicable to call it anything less than rape. So from that point of view rape does have a stigma in our society and we ought to be able to apply it to a wider range of offences than this law will currently allow. [ 
Interruption 
] It will not lose that stigma. 
Stephen Franks 
: It does. 
MARC ALEXANDER 
: No; we need to widen it to capture other offences that are equally as abhorrent as the man on woman scenario. [ 
Interruption 
] No I do not believe that that is true at all and if the member had spent any time with victims he would realise that. 
I do appreciate the fact that the penalties will now be on a par with those for rape because that will get rid of the gender inequity whereby a woman can literally rape a young child and get away with it whereas a man raping the same child will not. That provision is to be commended. 
I hope there will be some support for my Supplementary Order Paper at least in terms of its widening the connotation of rape to include other than just male on female. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Sue Bradford to clause 7 be agreed to: 
to omit from the heading to section 128 the words “Sexual violation defined” and substitute the words “Rape defined”.