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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4488 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Even in the very worst case scenario, I think they still encourage us to support this legislation. As to the $1.5m cost of implementing this program, I would say to Mr Kaine that Mr Humphries has been very effective in this Assembly in luring people to jobs appropriate for them. He managed to lure Mr Connolly to the position of Master of the Supreme Court and he lured Ms Follett to a job entirely appropriate to her skills.

Mr Whitecross: I take a point of order, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker. If I may defend my colleague Mr Humphries, I think Mr Moore has just accused Mr Humphries of providing an inducement to a member to resign from the Assembly, which would be a very bad thing for Mr Moore to impute. I hope that that is not what he was imputing.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Wood): I am sure he was not.

MR MOORE: It is appropriate for me to correct that. I do not mean to impute anything of the sort. I think that the particular people were entirely appropriate for the jobs which they were offered and which they now carry out. In fact, I hear from quite a range of sources that in both cases they do so very well. But it does draw my attention to Mr Kaine's estimate of $1.5m to do this job. I have to say that if Mr Kaine were prepared to put up $1.5m for the job I would love to be the contractor to do it, because I reckon I could put much more than $1m in my pocket and do the job with the rest.

It seems to me that what happens sometimes when people argue these sorts of things is that they go for the worst case scenario. They build up the costs for something and try to work out the most expensive way they could possibly do something and come up with these sorts of arbitrary costs. I simply do not believe it would cost $1.5m. I simply do not accept that having 50 kilometres an hour zones in the way it is put up in this legislation - the default speed for suburban roads - would cost that kind of money. I presume Mr Kaine had in mind that this would be part of an education program and, perhaps, an advertising program, which would be very important. I do accept that there would be significant costs associated with that; but I think $1.5m is quite extraordinary. As I say, I think any business person would love to be the one to whom this job was outsourced, because they would be able to make huge profits from the job.

No, there are no statistics available yet on a 50 kilometres an hour process in Canberra; but we do not make all decisions on a trial basis. If there is good enough evidence from elsewhere to say that we are likely to save lives, that we are likely to reduce trauma and that we are likely to achieve something, then we move down that process. The irony of Mr Kaine standing up here and saying that we have to run trials before we do so is that we do not hear that from the Liberals in most cases when they are talking law and order. When it comes to law and order, it is okay to go ahead with implementation and to measure the effect afterwards. There is an exception to that. Mr Humphries does talk of running a trial first in terms of surveillance cameras, but I must say that I would bet any money that if he had a chance to implement them he would go for it. I see him acknowledging that with a big grin on his face. It seems to me that this whole process of saying that we have to run trials first is just part of the whole series of furphies that Mr Kaine has put forward in this debate. It was about debating techniques, rather than about dealing sensibly with the issue.

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