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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (6 May) . . Page.. 1579 ..
MR BERRY (continuing):
prisoners in relation to your politics and you deserve the same treatment. Yours has been a shameful, vitriolic and spiteful attack at a time when you have a Minister tainted and no arguments to defend him. The only argument that you have to defend him is that you have the numbers. Nothing in principle supports that Minister because of his activities, and the best that you can do is walk into this place and use spiteful, hateful tactics on Jon Stanhope. Why do you not go to the issues of substance? No, you do not, because you only ever go to the personalities. Mr Stanhope's response today in relation to the budget was the sort of response that you would expect from an opposition in relation to a conservative budget. It hit the sorts of buttons that an opposition such as is provided by the Labor Party would hit in respect of a conservative budget prepared by Liberals. At the same time, there was a strong exposure of a tainted Minister. He is your baggage now and I am glad that you are travelling with him.
MR QUINLAN (11.15): Mr Speaker, I was about to go home, but I really think that the initiation of this debate was in particularly bad taste. Today was replete with people on that side of the house - - -
Mr Smyth: Bad taste. Look at the Canberra Times this morning.
MR QUINLAN: Stay out of this, sonny. It was replete with personal attacks. We have just had another one here tonight, an unworthy attack. It is completely predictable on the part of Mrs Carnell that she would denigrate Mr Stanhope's speech, it is predictable that Mr Smyth would be over there nodding like a noddy dog in the back of an old Valiant, and it is absolutely predictable that Mr Moore would join in as well, because Mr Moore has over time become the ultimate Liberal, wedded to the Government, and obviously he is going to make the same attack. I reckon that is pretty poor form.
MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services) (11.17): Mr Speaker, the things that Labor accuse us of are the very things that they stand up and do all the time. Mr Quinlan says that we resort to personal attacks. He stands up and opens with a personal attack. Mr Berry, whose own tactic is to play the individual every time, stands up here with a sanctimonious look on his face and says, "We never do anything wrong. We are the good guys here". Today, Mr Speaker, the good guys brought on a motion of no substance. Mr Berry claimed that there was more evidence to be revealed. We are still waiting for it, Mr Speaker.
It is an atrocious misuse of this place and its processes to stand here and say, "We are pure and you are hanging on by only one vote, your own vote". That is the nature of a small Assembly. Most things in this place are decided by one vote. But today is genuinely the Opposition's day. Today is the day that the focus is on the Opposition and what they stand for. What did we see today that they stand for? They stand for nothing. Jon Stanhope's leadership stands for nothing. How do we know that, Mr Speaker? We
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