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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 2 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 341 ..


MR STANHOPE (continuing):

support for the Westminster system, my support for the paramountcy of the parliament and my support for open government. In relation to that, nothing has changed.

I am pleased, as members know, to be able to table the report this afternoon.

MR HUMPHRIES: I ask a supplementary question. Chief Minister, did you receive advice from the Government Solicitor on 21 December or at any other time after the report was provided to you that suggested or reflected on the possibility of such proceedings compromising parliamentary privilege? Do you consider that not objecting to the injunction being sought might, in hindsight, have been construed as acquiescence in the compromising of parliamentary privilege? How do you propose to remedy what is obviously a compromise of the privilege of parliament that is being affected by these events?

MR STANHOPE: I should just clarify. I believe my meeting with the ACT Government Solicitor was on the 21st. I did meet him on a couple of occasions at that time. It may have been that I met him on the 20th as well as the 21st. So for completeness sake, the meeting was on the 20th and perhaps the 21st. At the meeting of the 21st there was no discussion or suggestion from any member present at the meeting-namely, the ACT Government Solicitor or the head of the department of justice-that there were any issues for the parliament or impacting or potentially impacting on parliamentary privilege in the circumstance of my not objecting to the granting of a temporary injunction. The issue was not canvassed at that meeting or at that time.

Certainly during January there was a flurry of activity-much of which you were a part of, Mr Humphries-in relation to these very interesting issues around parliamentary privilege. My position then-and it remains my position-was that we were presented with a very interesting and intriguing hypothetical situation or possibility, one which we lawyers, Mr Humphries, dwell on and take some pleasure in contemplating, namely, the powers of privilege and the extent to which the Bill of Rights Act of 1688 of the United Kingdom, in its application to Australia and the federal parliament and the implications for the operations of the ACT Assembly as a result of the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987 and the self-government act, applies and impinges here in the ACT. It is a very interesting issue and raises some hypothetical, potentially interesting possibilities for us.

I put the position in January. Of course, we are now talking purely hypothetically, because the privileges of the parliament have not been trammelled. The injunction has been lifted and I am tabling the report this afternoon for all the world to see. Of course, Mr Humphries, it is a report on your seven years of government and it is a very interesting report, because it is all about you. As I have said previously, it is part of the trifecta which follows on from the coroner's report on the hospital implosion and follows on from the Auditor-General's report on Bruce Stadium. It is the trifecta. It is the coroner's report on the hospital implosion, followed by the Auditor-General's report on Bruce Stadium, followed by the board of inquiry's report on your government's handling of disability services. So I am quite pleased to be releasing the report today.

I do not think it was worth our while considering the possibility of pursuing an appeal to the High Court to test the question of the hypothetical possibility of our privileges being compromised.


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