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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2487 ..

MRS CARNELL: And I ask Mr Berry to do the same - one after the other.

Mr Berry: I will go first. Mr Speaker, I said, "You have done before". Indeed, Mrs Carnell was censured for it.

Mr Corbell: Mr Speaker, I withdraw my remark that the Chief Minister deliberately misled the Assembly.

MR SPEAKER: Thank you. Let us get on with the debate.

MRS CARNELL: Thank you very much. Mr Speaker, the issue here is that this Assembly as a whole should get behind a set of words that condemn the Prime Minister's decision not to make Canberra his primary place of residence. I think we all agree with that position; but this side of the house would like to take it one step further and actually get up a petition - possibly the petition that we have copies of here - that could make the Prime Minister realise just what effect his decision is having, both economically and emotionally, on the community in Canberra. Let us do something together, for a change. Let us get something up that can show the Prime Minister just how we - not just this Assembly, but the Canberra community - feel about this particular issue, Mr Speaker. We do not want to play politics with it; we want to make a difference.

MR BERRY (Leader of the Opposition) (10.59): What a laugh this Chief Minister is! What a closet apologist! Mr Speaker, everybody else can have a shot at the Prime Minister, but the Labor Party cannot. Why is it so? I think Mrs Carnell has made it clear all along that John Howard was her preferred Prime Minister. She made that decision before John Howard was elected. She made it on the basis, one would expect, of her intimate knowledge of what he was about to do. Then, since John Howard has come to power and has made himself so unpopular, like a true populist, Mrs Carnell has sought to have a bit of a snipe at him here and there. Why did she rise in this debate today if all she was interested in was criticising those who criticised the Prime Minister? Surely it should be her job to attack somebody who holds the Federation of Australia in such contempt that he will not live in the place where that Federation set up its parliament. Why would Mrs Carnell not attack him for that?

He should be subject to the most vicious of attacks because of the actions that he has taken here in the ACT community. But Mrs Carnell would have some sympathy for some of them, because when Mrs Carnell came to office in 1995 we had an unemployment rate in the Territory of around 7 per cent and Mrs Carnell now gloats about the fact that she took us up to 8.6 per cent and back to the starting point again. Thanks for the ride. Of course, Mrs Carnell then demonstrated to John Howard how he should treat his Public Service - get stuck into them. And that is what John Howard did. Thousands and thousands of public servants later, we have the confidence of the community dashed - dashed by Mrs Carnell firstly and then given the knockout punch by John Howard.

Mrs Carnell: On a point of order, Mr Speaker, in the interests of consistency here: Mr Corbell actually took two points of order on the basis of my supposedly not speaking about the motion, even though I was actually speaking about where the Prime Minister is living. It appears that Mr Berry is not speaking about anything at all to do with where he is living.

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