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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (27 March) . . Page.. 921 ..

MR MOORE (Minister for Health, Housing and Community Services) (12.38), in reply: Mr Speaker, I will respond very quickly to a couple of the points. Mr Kaine and Mr Berry raised the notion that we somehow bring pressure on you in the party room. I do not know what happens in your party room. When I have attended the all-of-government meeting which includes me, Mr Speaker, there have been a number of times when, as Manager of Government Business, I have spoken to you and said I feel that a member's interjections at question time are inappropriate and have asked you to keep an eye on that. I think you and I would agree that, effectively, that was the extent of, if you like, pressure that was put on. At any time that I have said that I have also said to ministers and other members here that we must make sure that our behaviour in question time is exemplary. Now, none of us is perfect, Mr Speaker, and we let that go.

Mr Berry suggests that this is a hiatus created by the government. Nothing could be further from the truth, Mr Speaker. There was a vote. It was an 8:8 vote, with one member missing. You chose to name somebody, Mr Speaker. We had the confidence in your prerogative to name somebody and supported you. I moved the motion, not because I could count numbers but because standing orders required it to be moved.

Mr Berry: No, no; you moved the adjournment.

MR MOORE: Mr Berry interjects. He is talking about the adjournment of the Assembly. Okay, I misinterpreted that. Mr Berry also suggested that the Labor Party did not have, and did not believe in, no confidence of the Speaker.

Mr Berry: What?

MR MOORE: I have to question then that you did not think that that was a no-confidence motion in the Speaker. That is what you said in your speech. Am I misinterpreting your speech, Mr Berry? You indicated in your speech that you did not see the motion that failed, in that Mr Kaine was not booted out, as being a no-confidence motion in the Speaker. I understood you to say that in your speech here. That is a very different position from the one you took at the all-of-government business meeting when you asked me did I know whether the Speaker was going to step down as would be the normal precedent.

Mr Berry: I asked that question, yes.

MR MOORE: In which case I said to you, "No, as I understand it, he is not going to." You asked me why and how did I know. I said, "Because I asked him. Because I spoke to him." Mr Speaker, I am happy to reaffirm that position by supporting this motion of confidence in the Speaker.

Mr Speaker, I have to say that Mr Wood's speech was pretty close to the most self-righteous and most acrimonious he has made. It was almost but not quite to the level of Ms Tucker. It was pretty close. What I am particularly interested in was his approach to Ms McRae when she was Speaker. At the time I was on the crossbench with Ms Szuty. I do not know what Mr Stevenson did at that stage that she may have had some doubts on, but on many occasions Ms Szuty and I, and it only took one of us, remember, went to Ms McRae and said, "We think the house is not in order enough. We understand how

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