Page 2895 - Week 09 - Thursday, 18 August 2005
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MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR STANHOPE: Well, I wonder if there is any sense in wasting the valuable time of my officers, in giving detailed confidential briefings to the shadow minister for emergency services, if he is going to come in here and say nothing has been done. He obviously either did not listen or he simply does not understand.
Mr Pratt: There are a lot of measures that you have not even started on.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR STANHOPE: It really does make a final point about this legal action in which Mr Pratt is embroiled, why it is that his colleagues with him in incarceration actually believe he needs to be sued for putting their lives at risk in a security situation.
Mr Pratt: There are a lot of orders that you haven’t even commenced.
Mr Mulcahy: Point of order.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Chief Minister, resume your seat for a moment. Mr Pratt, I have called you to order at least three times. I warn you. Have you got a point of order, Mr Mulcahy?
Mr Mulcahy: Yes, Mr Speaker. You ruled yesterday on the matter of sub judice, canvassing matters that were coming before the courts and it seems the Chief Minister is straying from that ruling. I would ask you to bring him back to the matter of the question.
MR SPEAKER: I will not have any comment about matters that are going to come before the courts, Chief Minister. But I must say it is very difficult to hear what anybody is saying in this place because of the interjections, and it will not be tolerated. Chief Minister.
MR STANHOPE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a matter of grave concern to me in a circumstance where the government has shown courtesy to the opposition and the shadow minister, that is, the shadow minister, who is also our now noted anti-police shadow minister, the police-bashing shadow police minister, and we know the regard with which he is held by the ACT Police in relation to his very noted and detailed police-bashing. It is a matter of grave concern in relation to the courtesy which the government has extended to the opposition—to both the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister for emergency services in relation to security briefings, which, in many respects, must be regarded as and remain confidential because of the nature of some of the information that is being provided by the government to the opposition—that the opposition abuses that courtesy, abuses that trust, when it comes in here and claims that nothing has been done.
They know very well—exactly and precisely—what has been done and they have had the opportunity to question in close detail the senior ACT government officials responsible for security. Perhaps they have not taken the opportunity, perhaps they are too lazy, perhaps they do not care, perhaps it is all about using terrorism, and our response to the
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