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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1865 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Ms Tucker gave a prepared speech. Everything she said in the house today she had obviously written before she came down here, so I do not add anything to what has been said already about her remarks.

Mr Kaine gave a speech in this place which dripped with venom. He made a number of mistakes in the course of his remarks. I want to touch on those as briefly as I can. Mr Kaine said that the cost of the Bruce Stadium development is now up to $44m. That is not true. The total cost, when you exclude recurrent matters or one-off matters, is in fact more like $34.6m. It is exaggeration to suggest the cost is now $44m.

Mr Kaine said that the Chief Minister claimed that public money could be spent without an appropriation and that this was preposterous. The Chief Minister said that money could be spent publicly without an Appropriation Act but reliance could be placed on the Financial Management Act as an alternative source of appropriations - what are called standing appropriations. That is what she said, and that is true.

Mr Kaine is critical of the Government for having tided the Bruce Stadium project over the end of the financial year by borrowing a sum of money on the last day of the financial year. I simply draw to members' attention in this debate that in June 1990, when Mr Kaine was Treasurer and Chief Minister, the Alliance Government borrowed $23.7m to balance the books because its budget otherwise would not balance by the end of the financial year.

Mr Moore: To balance the budget.

MR HUMPHRIES: To balance the Government's budget. Lastly, I want to read a line which somehow just seems appropriate. It is from a Star Wars movie. They are the words of Yoda advising Luke Skywalker. He said, "Once you start down the dark path, forever it will consume your destiny, and consume you it will". I do not know why, but those words seem to ring a certain bell. I am not suggesting that Mr Kaine is Darth Kaine, but I am suggesting that his transformation in the last year-and-a-half has been pretty profound and that much of what he has said tonight - - -

Mr Kaine: You had better watch out.

Mr Moore: The Darth side is coming out.

Mr Smyth: He will get his light sabre out.

MR HUMPHRIES: I am confident that the force is with me and that I am going to get by. The only other comment I want to make about other speakers in this debate is about Mr Berry. Mr Berry declined to speak in this debate until I had spoken, even though we have now had two speakers against the motion. But that is Mr Berry's wont. He will repeat in his remarks, endlessly, I am sure, that the Chief Minister broke the law. I ask members to ask themselves whether there has been any evidence put forward in this debate that the Chief Minister has actually broken any law at all. I ask those opposite to produce at last, at 8 o'clock at night after a long day of debate, the evidence that the Chief Minister has actually personally broken the law. We on this side of the chamber know that they cannot, because there is no such evidence. There is not any such evidence, although she fully accepts and apologises for the breach of the law which has

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