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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2597 ..

Question so resolved in the affirmative.

Amendment agreed to.

MRS CROSS (10.39): This morning, I tried to table a petition containing more than 35,000 signatures. As the petition was out of order, I had to seek the leave of the Assembly to do so. The people of the ACT who signed the petition have today had a victory. Not only have we succeeded in honouring the democratic processes of the ACT, but also the spirit of cooperation of the crossbench and the opposition has resulted in a commonsensical outcome that is in the best interest of the community.

To quote Mr Smyth, the process has been agonising at times, but it has been made more tolerable by the support of the opposition, the Greens and the Democrats. I want to pay a special tribute and show my appreciation to Ms Dundas and Andrew Blake from her office, Nick Tedeschi and the other staff of my office, and Parliamentary Counsel. Above all, I have to pay tribute to Pat Reid, president of the Pharmacy Guild of the ACT, and Ann Dalton, the executive director. I acknowledge the members of the national pharmacy board and guild who are here for a national conference. I also acknowledge Mr Paul O’Connor, the chairman of the Pharmacy Board of the ACT, whom I had the pleasure of meeting this evening. I would have loved to have met him earlier, but it was at least good that I got to meet him tonight.

I am delighted with the support I have received and I am so thrilled that we have been able to get this bill through the Assembly. It is a landmark bill. It is very important for the community and it is important for the pharmacy industry. Again, I thank Ms Tucker, Ms Dundas, Mr Smyth and my opposition colleagues for supporting this bill.

Bill as a whole, as amended, agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

Adjournment

Motion (by Mr Wood) proposed:

That the Assembly do now adjourn.

Minister for Health and Minister for Planning

Assembly toilets

Naming of public servants

MRS DUNNE (10.41): Mr Speaker, I cannot let the last couple of days of debate go by without reflecting on some of the turns of phrase. I do not want to reflect upon the debates, but I think that there has been a new height in semantics reached in the last little while, mainly by Mr Corbell. Yesterday, in debating a matter of public importance, we talked about what in other states are called code reds but in the ACT are generally called bypasses. In the course of the MPI, the code reds or bypasses became load sharing, which I thought was a new and neat way to talk about a problem in the health system.

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