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Mr Berry: Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order in regard to relevance. This is not about Mr De Domenico's infatuation with me.

MR DE DOMENICO: Mr Speaker, on that point of order: With the greatest of respect, it was Mr Berry who used the word “numbers”. I am just commenting on what Mr Berry said. If he was in order, I dare say that so am I.

MR SPEAKER: Continue, Mr De Domenico. I am sure that you will get back to the subject.

MR DE DOMENICO: Yes, I always do, eventually, Mr Speaker. Mr Berry also suggested that this approach was piecemeal. It was not piecemeal at all. As I understand it, Mr Moore consulted with the Government, with the Opposition and with the Greens. What is piecemeal about it I do not know. If this Assembly cannot come to an agreement after the matter is discussed amongst all groupings in the Assembly, I do not know what we can do. Mr Berry also said that it was not fair. Once again, I disagree with Mr Berry. I think it is very fair. We are now going to be in a situation where all groupings in this Assembly will be debating and voting on a motion presented by Mr Moore after consultation with all those groupings. In the opinion of the Government, it is not only fair; it also makes a lot of good sense that a committee called the Economic Development and Tourism Committee be established and that that committee ought to look at things like economic development.

I must say that the Government's preference would be that the committee should also look into science and technology. If tourism is an important area of economic development, I suggest that so is science and technology in terms of the ACT. I must admit that the previous Labor Government did some excellent work in the high-tech area of technology by making sure that those companies were well looked after in the ACT in view of future employment prospects and also as a future source of exports into the South East Asian area in particular. Science and technology should be a very important link in the economic development area. However, we can also accept that that ought to remain in the area of the Planning and Environment Committee. We are not going to die in a ditch over it. I now note that Ms Tucker is proposing an amendment to make sure that that does remain with the Planning and Environment Committee, and the Government will be supporting Ms Tucker's amendment as well. As I said, it is not one of those issues over which people die in ditches.

The thing that really concerns me, though, is that from time to time Mr Berry seems to find it easy to play politics with the most commonsense things, which ought not to be political. Then he stands up and talks about how numbers are used. Numbers are used when commonsense is not used. For all those reasons, the Government thinks Mr Moore's motion is a commonsense one. We will be supporting it, and we also give notice that we will be supporting Ms Tucker's amendment at the same time.

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