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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (6 March) . . Page.. 655 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

attempt to sack the board of the bushfire recovery task force. In neither case is what the Chief Minister said true.

Mr Corbell: Mr Speaker, I take a point of order. Mr Smyth should know he cannot speak to the substantive motion he is seeking to move but can speak only to the proposition that standing orders be suspended.

MR SPEAKER: At the same time, Mr Smyth has to give some inkling as to why he wants to suspend the standing orders. It is a limited debate. Mr Smyth. You should keep to the reasons why you need the standing orders to be suspended.

MR SMYTH: Mr Speaker, I am aware of that and will endeavour to do so, although, as you point out, there is some crossover when you have to explain what you are concerned about.

We believe that this deliberate misrepresentation is a political ploy. When challenged to produce the evidence that we have said these things, the Chief Minister has been unable to do so. Upon request through points of order throughout yesterday and today that he stop doing it, Mr Speaker, you quite rightly pointed out that one of the forms open to members was to move suspension of standing orders or to censure the Chief Minister to stop him from continuing in this practice. I am taking you up on that suggestion.

It is very important that when members make statements in this place they are accurate. We doubt the accuracy of what is being said about what we have said. The way that what we said is being portrayed is a continued and deliberate misrepresentation of the Liberal Party, in particular of Mrs Dunne and of me, and things that we have said. For that reason, we think it is appropriate to censure the Chief Minister.

MRS DUNNE (4.03): I support the motion, Mr Speaker. We need to suspend standing orders to put an end to the propensity of the Chief Minister in this place and elsewhere in the public arena to completely misrepresent the position of the opposition. We have taken points of order on this, and we have used standing order 46 to make personal explanations, but this does not stop the Chief Minister from deliberately and with malice misrepresenting the views of the opposition, causing discord in the community and causing discord, discontent and unhappiness amongst people who are working very hard in the community to get the community back on the ground.

If anyone is politicising this process, it is the Chief Minister, who has repeatedly said here and elsewhere that I wish to sack Sandy Hollway, Terry Snow, Robert de Castella and Maureen Cane. This is not the case. As evidence of this, Mr Speaker, I seek leave to table a transcript of a conversation between myself and Mike Jeffreys on radio 2CC, beginning at 7.11 this morning.

Leave granted.

MRS DUNNE: I table the following paper:

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