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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (28 June) . . Page.. 2132 ..
MR
SPEAKER: I do and I will. Mr Hargreaves, withdraw that "untruth". Please, be careful of your-MR
HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, I have to be given an opportunity to speak to that point order.MR
SPEAKER: As you will.MR
HARGREAVES: At your pleasure, I might say. Mr Humphries suggested that we had made some capital out of his untruth, and that was the beast to which I referred about the untruth. Mr Speaker, I withdraw, at your insistence.MR
SPEAKER: I ask all members to please be careful about the language you use in this place.MR
HARGREAVES: Very well, Mr Speaker. Mr Osborne got up and said that I got it patently wrong. The comments I made were before Ms Lennon appeared before the Estimates Committee.Mr
Humphries: See, there is no basis for making the claims.MR
HARGREAVES: No, you just cannot have it both ways.Mr
Humphries: Isn't that worse?MR
HARGREAVES: No, it is not worse. Mr Speaker, if you are going to give me a hard time, would you please treat other members in the same way. Thank you. The issue is this: my comments were made during committee discussions and I have said in my report that I suspect that X was the case. Ms Tucker has already shown Mr Humphries that there is nothing unusual about that.Secondly, Mr Osborne says that I got it wrong. He then quoted what Ms Lennon said before the estimates committee. The facts are that when she came to that estimates committee she did nothing to convince me, she said nothing to convince me, that I was totally wrong. I refer members to the estimates committee report, in which the actual events are tabled. I believe there was a protracted decision-making process that worked in such a way that the Women's Legal Centre considered that they were being detrimentally treated; and I said so, and I said why I suspected X to be the case.
The simple fact is that it took this minister until 27 April 2000 to decide on the 1999-2000 allocation. No wonder people like me were getting twitchy about it. If you are going to have a go at me, at least get your chronology right. You can say righto and be as dismissive as you like, but this will have not one bit of effect on me. At least get it right. If you get it right you know damn well I will back down. But if you do not get it right I will not, and I will not on this issue.
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