Unfortunately the labor party is the less conservative of the 2 major parties in the territory; the 2 power parties Liberal and Labor.

We had a local pharmacist, on evening radio news, lamenting that she would even have report under 16s buying condoms. But then we have the anomaly that condoms are sold in the supermarkets. The question has to be asked whether a checkout operator would be required to report them under this act?

When I was 13 years old, in my first year of high school, during the early 70s many of the boys bragged that they had had sex. Now we all know that most of them were lying but there would have been some that were sexually experienced. I would also suggest that by the time I was 16 at least 1/3 to 1/2 of my fellow students had experienced sex, good, indifferent and, I hope not too many of them, bad. I understand that students of today are far less naive than we were. So how many are, potentially, going to be caught under this legislation

Then the fact that the territory has the highest number of ‘STIs’/head of population in the country. Under 16s would be reluctant to go for medical treatment if they feared punishment. ‘STIs’ need to be treated early if there is to be little or no health repercussions, if they are not treated early enough, they can, in extreme cases, be fatal.

The negative consequences of this and other federal and territory intervention legislation are too many to list here. To start with; the human rights legislation that are suppose to protect?? me, have been suspended for people living in aboriginal communities.

Here are some articles from the ABC commenting on the legislation.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/21/2548176.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/20/2546948.htm

Isn’t it better that teens at least have safe sex and are well informed?!

All I can say is that I sure as hell hope that they don’t decide to implement this anywhere else.