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MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Connolly suggested that this was entirely consistent on the part of the Brisbane city government. Can I suggest that there are all sorts of fingers we can point at other people in this world over issues of this kind. I ask those opposite: What do you think about whaling? Hands up those who support the wide-scale whaling policy of the Japanese Government. Nobody. Hands up those who want to do something about it. Nobody, apparently. Mr Speaker, there we see it. It appears that this sort of issue brings out the hypocrite in all of us.

I am concerned about the direction in which this motion goes. Mr Berry put forward the idea that we are somehow entitled to punish the people of Versailles for the decision of the French Government.

Mr Berry: I did not put that idea forward at all.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Berry did put that view forward and, indeed, went so far as to say in his remarks that it is okay to punish the voters of Canberra for voting Liberal at the last election.

Ms McRae: Yes.

MR HUMPHRIES: That is a quite obnoxious concept. What sort of punishment do you think is appropriate, Ms McRae? Boycotting of goods produced in the ACT? Criticism of the people of Canberra? We are criticised again and again in this place. People around the country say, “Canberra did this” or “Canberra is responsible for that” or “Canberra makes decisions we do not like”, equating the people of Canberra with the Commonwealth Government. We have attacked that mentality time and again in this place, but is not this motion doing precisely the same thing? We are somehow linking the people of Versailles-Les Yvelines with the French Government. They happen to live a few kilometres away from where the French Government has its base, but that is the only connection. It would be as wrong to punish those people for the French Government's decision as it would be to punish us for a decision made by the Australian Government. That is quite obnoxious.

I would urge members to reconsider their position on this matter. It is a question of our maintaining a relationship that is worth more to the people of the ACT in the long term than this particular issue might be worth in bringing the matter to the limited attention of the French Government. If I believed that we could press some button and make Jacques Chirac sit up and pay attention to the ACT Legislative Assembly, I assure you that I would do it. He might get copies of WIN news flown over to him in Paris and sit down in the Elysee Palace and watch it, but I very much doubt it. If we could achieve anything with a motion of this kind, then yes, let us do it. But if all we achieve is an end to a relationship that has been worked at hard for the last 10 years by people in this Territory and in Versailles-Les Yvelines, then we have certainly cut off our noses to spite our faces, and that is, I think, a greatly regrettable decision.

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