Page 2144 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR STEVENSON (8.36): Mr Connolly said that the law is what the courts say it is. We have found out tonight that that is not true. The law is what we say it is. If the courts get it wrong, we will correct them; and, if they get it wrong again, we will correct them again. There never is a problem for us. The court will make a chronological decision, but we can always beat that. We can say, "Ha, we have got you. Before you made your decision we changed the law". That is an appalling situation.
Mr Humphries mentioned that there is an expectation of what one needs to win on those scratch cards. That was not my expectation - not that I would buy them. I did not know that you were supposed to marry up three numbers. What I would have done with a scratch card is read the instructions and then think, "That is interesting. Am I a winner or not a winner? I do not understand the instructions". Let me tell you about an interesting situation. One of the very large department stores in Canberra said, "We will match the price of any store. You bring us a sheet with the advertised price on it and we will match their price". I was nearly going to go along there with an advertised price of $130 for a $1,500 refrigerator. The advertised price was $130. Mark my words, I would have got a refrigerator for $130, possibly after a bit of a disagreement. I did not do it because I, personally, did not agree with doing that. That was my viewpoint.
Mr De Domenico: You already had one in your office, did you not?
MR STEVENSON: That was not quite the case. I could have got a TV set, a lounge suite and all the other things they advertised.
Mr Berry: But they are all up in your suite anyway. You would not want another lot.
MR STEVENSON: No, I am sorry, Mr Berry; they are up in your suite, along with a shower and other things. The point is that the company would have said, "Look, that cannot be right. We do not have any responsibility for supplying all these things because we did not mean that. No-one would hold that we really meant to supply people $1,500 fridges for $130. After all, it costs us a lot more than that to buy them. Obviously, it was a genuine error. No-one would suggest that that was our intention". I think we all understand, or we should understand. We know what the courts would say. They would say, "Tough", and fair enough too. What do errors mean to us in life? They teach us lessons. What we have learnt tonight is a principle about money. It might not be worth this much money; but, heavens above, it is worth this much money. That is all that principle means here.
I would be more of a mind to vote no to retrospective legislation no matter what; but you say, "Hey, but what about government?". I will not talk about this Government; but I will talk about another one, to be fair on the subject. Let us say that a government mucked up to the tune of not $50m but half a billion dollars and could not collect the rates for the past five years because the legislation was not valid. We would have to do some fast thinking to get agreement in the community. We would have to work out how to do without a lot of money, and so on. I suggest that that would be a damn useful practice when it comes to government. I mean that. I could talk for a long time about why it
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .