Page 824 - Week 03 - Thursday, 14 April 1994
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I thank Mrs Carnell for her contribution to allowing me to arrive at this position. There were free and frank exchanges around the committee table and in the halls of the old Assembly building, and I thank her for her contribution to allowing me to make that assessment. I have no doubt that Mr Moore will not either appreciate or accept the sentiment expressed in my additional comments, and that is Mr Moore's right. I would jealously guard Mr Moore's right to have that view; but I believe that I, as a member of the committee, also have a right, and I have exercised that by tabling these additional comments this day.
I have much pleasure in commending the substance of the recommendations in this report and look forward to Mr Moore tabling in this place the Bill referred to in the report. I understand from some preliminary discussions about this question this morning that, as Mr Moore has indicated, there may need to be some initial work done to tidy up some of the implications and the technical way in which some issues are expressed. However, I believe that it is an appropriate way for us to proceed, and I look forward to participating in the debate in this house when the Bill formally comes before us.
MRS CARNELL (Leader of the Opposition) (11.05): Madam Speaker, I support Mr Lamont's right to put forward additional comments to this report. As you rightly said in your introduction to this debate, the issue of the preface has caused the committee probably more real anguish than putting the report together did. The report took a lot of time and a lot of effort, and I will speak on that issue separately. To discuss the preface and Mr Lamont's additional comments, the only concern I have is that Mr Lamont did not tell me until just now that he was going to do this today. If I had known, I would have also put forward additional comments, so I will make those comments now on the record.
As Mr Moore knows, when I saw his preface I was disappointed. I was not disappointed because of Mr Moore expressing his opinion on the issue at hand in a preface, which I believe as chairman of the committee he has a right to do. What I was concerned about was Mr Moore's reasonably gratuitous and certainly incorrect analysis of Liberal Party policy. I will not attempt to make a comment on his analysis of Labor Party policy; Mr Lamont has done that. In his preface Mr Moore says:
Although the Liberal Party have been advocates of referenda to assess community opinion on controversial issues, they have announced that they will not support a referendum on active euthanasia.
He suggests further that Liberal Party members were lobbied against their own policy of taking such issues to referendum. He goes on:
On the issue of active euthanasia both major parties have forsaken their own policy positions.
I take exception to that, and Mr Moore knows that I take exception to it. The Liberal Party has never put forward a policy to assess community opinion on controversial issues via referenda. The Liberal Party have been quite strong, and will continue to be, on our policy of citizen-initiated referenda - not necessarily government-initiated referenda on issues the government, for whatever reason, may find too hard to make decisions on. I and my colleagues believe very strongly that, if an adequate
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