Page 4564 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 6 December 1994
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Mr De Domenico: Did Mr Connolly have a copy of that?
MR MOORE: Not only did Mr Connolly have a copy of that; Mr Connolly was kind enough to provide that copy for me from his own bookshelf. It may well be that for a time Mr Connolly did not have a copy because he had given his personal copy to me, although I have explained that to his officers, who were getting him copies.
It simply is not necessary to change this motion. I suppose that one of the other things that all members of the Labor Party here must get terribly embarrassed about is that you have an item on your own platform that goes far further than we have done in passing this amendment. It must be terribly embarrassing to know that your Minister for Health not only did not support his platform - you might do that at any time; I understand that you are not compelled to implement it - but worked actively against your own platform. That is the most extraordinary betrayal by this Minister of members of the Labor Party and, indeed, Labor voters, who would have looked at that part of your platform. Fortunately, Labor voters, because we do not have above-the-line voting - that system for which Geoff Pryor drew the Chief Minister crawling around on the floor - will have the opportunity, because of this issue, to put Mr Connolly down as the last person on their Labor ticket, if they so wish.
Mr Connolly: I will take my chances.
MR MOORE: The Minister with the uncomfortable face indicates that he will take his chances. As members read the legal opinion that has now been tabled, they will realise that the whole process of presenting a picture that is different from what we intended and what we set out to do and what we did do has been extraordinary. Madam Speaker, that is why I made the comment earlier in my speech that you will not permit me to refer to about the obtrusion on faces. We have in front of us a motion that seeks to rescind a piece of legislation that effectively goes part of the way towards implementing the Labor Party platform. One of the greatest ironies of this Assembly is that the Labor Party's Minister has worked so hard to destroy that part of the platform.
It seems to me that a great deal has been made of the concept of medical research. Because that is the case, we have a situation where the Liberals have foreshadowed that they will be putting an amendment restricting medical research to the way it is set up in section 33 of the Act. I think that is a great pity, because section 33 of the Act means a series of things. First of all, it means that we are restricting it to clinical trials, and there is a whole range of medical research that goes well beyond the clinical trial. We can start with the case series, and perhaps I will come back to that later in the debate. We had expected that, with the handful of people in the ACT who would have been able to take advantage of this legislation, the community as a whole would gain knowledge from it. That is why we put medical research in there. Not only was it a compassionate act for people who had found that other drugs had failed them; it was also one that would provide knowledge to the rest of the community so that they would be able to answer the sorts of questions that Ms Follett raised.
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