Page 500 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 8 March 2006
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Mr Pratt: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker, concerning imputation. There was no vicious attack. That is an imputation and he should withdraw it.
MR SPEAKER: That is not a point of order.
MR STANHOPE: There was a vicious attack by Mr Pratt yesterday on the police, an allegation by him that the police refused to respond to a triple-0 call. There is no more damning allegation. And then we discovered in the debate around that allegations being made by Mr Stefaniak. We are waiting for Mr Stefaniak to table the information which he relied on in his question, the names and the details of the gang and the gang members of which Mr Stefaniak is aware and which formed the basis of his question yesterday, for provision to the police so that they can now better respond to the allegations made against them, so that the police can now seek to defend once again their reputation against these outrageous attacks that are being made constantly by members of the Liberal Party against the police in the ACT and their capacity.
I can understand the desire at least—not the need, but the desire—of Mr Pratt to make a statement in relation to the tabling of the documents because we know obviously of their paucity. We know on the basis of questions asked, of the allegations which have not been well founded or proven, that he wants basically to cover why it is that he continues to attack the police.
Mr Smyth: He does not have to.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, I think you have forgotten that you are on a warning.
MR STANHOPE: An issue, of course, is the fact that it is really a family matter involving the Leader of the Opposition that we are dealing with here. The complainant happens to be a relative of Mr Smyth’s. That does raise the question of the Leader of the Opposition using his position as Leader of the Opposition to personally contact the Chief Police Officer to make allegations and to follow up family matters. I think there is an issue there for us to consider as well.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (5.41): In talking to the motion put by Mr Smyth for the suspension of standing orders, let me just point out a couple of things. The first is that we have the old Chief Minister going off half-cocked here, flying off at a tangent and going out deeper and deeper into space. He would not even have bothered to check that this document was brought to the Deputy Clerk at 5 o’clock and the Deputy Clerk advised me that I should table this document after the then motion was completed. Get your facts straight, Jon; get your facts straight. That is the first point. The second point is that Mrs Burke and Mr Stefaniak may not have written information because they were verbally briefed by me and Mr Smyth in the party room—straight out, face to face.
I have information because I participated in a face-to-face briefing with Mrs Belinda Hill/Reilly, one of the mothers witnessing the incident at Campbell in which a large gang of youths ran through the place and carried out a number of assaults. What I have here is a paraphrasing of the notes taken on my XDA02PDA in that particular meeting and transcribed in this document. Mr Smyth and I had taken notes in the initial discussions face to face with families about the incidents which occurred. We had then briefed
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