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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 10 Hansard (23 September) . . Page.. 3519 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

serious. When Mr Smyth spoke, he made that clear, as did Mrs Dunne. Mrs Burke did so through her interjection: "You only had to go and talk. Go through the motions, that is all you had to do."

Mrs Burke: You do not like doing that, any of you.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

MR WOOD: "Go through the motions. Just do that. Go and talk, nothing more."It seems to me very clear, from their words today, that this is a pretence. They are going through the motions now, as they wanted Mr Corbell to. They are not doing too well out there in the community. They are looking desperately for any issue that they can hang something on, and this is it. This was raised at the time and now they are saying to this Assembly that what they did was put a motion forward and, when it got up, Mr Corbell just had to go and talk about it and go through those motions and they would have been satisfied.

They were not really serious about it, nor, of course, should they have been serious, since it was their business in the first place. They carried it forward: "Oh, we made a mistake", they said. You make many mistakes but the biggest mistake is this, today. You have demonstrated quite clearly that you are not really serious about this at all. You just wanted to run a line out there for the community. I think it is a very poor effort on your part.

MRS BURKE (3.28): This is a serious issue to which, in a way, we are forced to stand and speak. I am disappointed and, quite frankly, I am appalled that we have to rise in this place and even be here doing such a thing. It really makes a mockery of why we are all here in this place. This debate has swayed way beyond the bounds of what we are actually talking about. It could not be simpler. The mocking snipes and gibes from the government can only reinforce the arrogance of their stance on this.

Mr Wood seems to think that you do not go and talk to people when you are a minister or when you are in government. It is a hard job-it is in the too-hard basket-to face the people out there.

Mr Wood: Where did that come from?

MRS BURKE: From you, Minister, from you. You do not like talking to people. You have told me that you are not going to do that, so I have it first hand as well.

Mr Wood: No, do not distort my words.

MR SPEAKER: Order, members!

MRS BURKE: The minister is trying to sway this debate and bring the credibility of this place down to an all-time low. Let's once again do something at its lowest common denominator. Let's not support and uphold the tenets of this place, the Westminster system or the democratic process.

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