Statutes Amendment (Public Assemblies and Addresses) Bill
09/11/2011
The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (17:37): This afternoon I will speak briefly in support of the Hon. Stephen Wade’s Statutes Amendment (Public Assemblies and Addresses) Bill. In light of the escalating issue with street preachers in our city centre, it is important that we take action and do so now. It is no secret to anyone in this chamber that I fully support freedom of speech, but I question whether freedom of speech is truly freedom if it comes at the cost of the peace of our mall-goers, as this street preaching is clearly doing. I also think it is no secret that diversity is crucial to our beloved mall, so we must fight to protect a Rundle Mall that is everyone’s.
Whilst I strongly support the right to free speech, as I said, and the right of people to follow a belief system of their choice, I do not believe that amplified public harassment and ramming one’s views down the throat of another as they are simply passing by is an appropriate method of sharing one’s opinions. I was very concerned to hear the discussion on this issue on 891’s morning program with Matt Abraham and David Bevan. In this discussion the street preacher called Caleb Corneloup talked about individuals being targeted in the mall, and I quote Caleb verbatim from the transcript of this program:
I’m not sure, I haven’t specifically seen people doing it, pointing out people because of the way they dress or anything, but I imagine perhaps somebody has in the past and I don’t see anything wrong with that. I think it’s not a problem to give a general comment during the preaching about the way that a women dresses because there are ways that women dress which are provocative, which are shameful, because there’s also ways that women dress which are good and they can still be attractive and so forth. There’s nothing wrong with preaching against sin.
Caleb’s view that preaching at young women with a megaphone is indeed occurring, and that it is completely okay to do this was supported by further exchange on the same radio show. This is a quote from a caller by the name of Howard:
I was walking past, watching these guys preach. A young girl took issue with their view on abortion. They targeted her for about 15 minutes with a bullhorn. Two of them doing standover tactics with this young girl…I stepped in to defend this girl…she was beside herself with what they were saying, that she was cursed, damned to hell because she’d had an abortion and God had turned his back on her, and they quoted various scriptures that were taken totally out of context. They’re…an affront to moderates everywhere.
To which David Bevan asked, ‘Caleb, is this sort of thing going on?’, and Caleb replied:
I know the example he’s talking about…this girl came up laughing and mocking saying she’d had three abortions, the preacher then began to speak to her…saying she had murdered three children, which is true, abortion is murder, you cannot go murdering, the safest place for the child should be in the womb…
As a feminist, as a young woman, as a person who is pro-choice, and as someone who obviously supports the rights of same-sex attracted people also, I will not go into all the reasons I find the whole street preaching situation thoroughly deplorable, but I will say I hope this bill can provide something of a solution to the current state of affairs.
As I understand it, this bill ensures people disturbing the peace can be requested, by the police, to reduce the level of noise that an amplification system is producing, or indeed direct a person to stop using the amplification device altogether. This allows the police to subjectively assess the noise being created by a person or group, and the public context (that is, surrounding noise) in which it is being created.
At present, the Adelaide City Council cannot enforce fines issued on this matter as they have no authority to collect names and addresses. This bill also addresses this problem. I would hope that, given the kind of highly concerning exchanges that are already occurring in the mall, the police would seek to intervene and direct street preachers not to use amplification.
To that end, I also note, as the Hon. Mr Kandelaars has already indicated, that the government will be introducing amendments to the Local Government Act which I personally consider to be complementary to this bill. I consider that the amendments to the Local Government Act will simply expedite the use of by-law 6, where this bill will allow us to take longer-term action, and that this end, both pieces of legislation will have my support. Thank you.
