Page 4581 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 6 December 1994
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I can suggest that in relation to the way it has been executed there are problems, but I will not challenge the veracity of why Mr Moore does what he does. I cannot say that for the people across this room. As I said in my opening remarks, last week Mrs Carnell, in a display of self-mutilation, ripped the throat out of the Liberal Party. That is basically what has been done. You came in here today and voted with the Government to rescind the dangerous amendments.
Mrs Carnell: No, not dangerous amendments.
MR LAMONT: You voted to do so. You stood up here and said, "I acknowledge that these amendments were ill-considered, ill-conceived, badly thought out. I vote to withdraw them".
Mrs Carnell: We did not say any of that.
MR LAMONT: That is exactly what you have done this afternoon. Then what do we have? The ultimate face-saver, the ultimate tourniquet - these amendments, designed to give the impression that it was not all so bad last week, and to say, "It has a couple of minor technical faults; let us fix it". Fundamentally, what you are proposing here is dangerous. It is dangerous in relation to achieving the objectives Mr Moore and you espouse, that is, the proper controlled clinical assessment of the benefits of this drug. That is what you are proposing to do. These amendments simply do not achieve that. These amendments are as dangerous as at least three of your party members said to you last week that your amendments were. These amendments are equally dangerous and equally ill-conceived as those that three of your own members said to you that you should walk away from. That is the position. As I have said, and it has to be rammed home, these amendments are a tourniquet. They are to stop you and your party from haemorrhaging. They are to try to stem the tide of the damage you, Mrs Carnell, have caused your party and its chances of electoral success next February. That is what these amendments are for, and it should be exposed to the people of Canberra that that is the case.
Mr Humphries: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The Minister is mixing his metaphors outrageously. I would ask him to withdraw those.
MR LAMONT: The only thing that is mixed is not a metaphor; it is the sort of undergraduate humour that Mr Humphries has been unable to leave behind since - - -
Mr Humphries: Like this?
MR LAMONT: I understand, in some of the photos I have seen, that that is exactly what you are doing. I think at that stage you were standing on your hands. What we are talking about here is the tourniquet, not the blowtorch. The finger cannot be pointed at the Attorney-General or the Government. The damage that has been caused to the Liberal Party has been caused by the Liberal Party. The damage that has been caused to each of your colleagues, Mrs Carnell - to Mr Kaine, to Mr Stefaniak and, dare I say, to Mr Cornwell, notwithstanding that he was brought in from his sick bed to vote in the Assembly last week - will go down in legend. Two months before an election, you now seek to apply a tourniquet to stop the damage.
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