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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2853 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

governments begin to develop a plan or a response as innovative and potentially as significant as the work that we are doing through the Office of Sustainability.

Mrs Dunne has just railed against the information that was available in relation to the Office of Sustainability, saying that it was lacking. It would be a very interesting exercise to go back to the estimates process on that. Mr Humphries and Mrs Dunne have just charged this government with being lazy, secretive and a range of other things. It would be interesting to go back through the estimates transcript and find out how many questions Mr Humphries and Mrs Dunne asked in estimates of the head of the Office of Sustainability. I will do it before tomorrow.

We have just had a diatribe from Mrs Dunne that there has been no information, that nobody stood to explain, that there was nobody who could actually explain what we are doing with the Office of Sustainability, that there was nobody ready to answer the questions, that there was no idea of what it was about, what we were seeking to achieve, what the vision was or why we were doing what we were doing.

Let us go back and look at how many questions Mr Humphries asked of the head of the Office of Sustainability. Let us look at how many questions Mrs Dunne asked. Let us look at how many questions members of the Liberal Party asked. Let us look at that and see how much humbug there is in this attack that there was nobody prepared to stand up and talk about the Office of Sustainability. How many questions was I asked in estimates about the Office of Sustainability? How many questions was Rob Tonkin asked in estimates about the Office of Sustainability? How many questions was Peter Ottesen asked about the Office of Sustainability?

You stand here and criticise us, saying that there was nobody prepared to provide you with any information about the Office of Sustainability, but you did not ask about it. You did not ask about it, so it was absolute humbug, absolute hypocrisy, and at the end of the day lazy of you. In fact, Ms Dundas asked more questions than Mr Humphries and Mrs Dunne together. We all know that. It was the laziest performance, the worst performance, ever by an opposition in estimates; there is no doubt about that. It was a travesty. You were a disgrace.

I guess it is a problem when your mind is on the Senate, when your mind is up the hill, and your deputy is posturing. Does he wait for his leader to jump or does he gently nudge him? Does he roll up to his leader's office with Mrs Dunne, does he line up at the leader's office with Mrs Dunne, and say, "Listen, Gary, you can't have it both ways. You can't lead us when you are telling the whole community you don't actually want to be here. You don't even want to be in this parliament, you want to be in another parliament, and your energy levels show that. You are not doing the job. You are not doing the work. You didn't do any work in estimates. You want the job in the Senate-go. You owe it to your party and you owe it to the people of Canberra to jump."

Mr Humphries: You would like that, wouldn't you?

MR STANHOPE: In a way I would, Mr Humphries. I am not sure who has got the numbers.

Mr Humphries: Would that be because I was more popular than you at the last election?

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