Page 3591 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 25 August 2009

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Party is asking over and over again. What would Andrew do? What would Andrew do?

He has a good chuckle because he understands the relevance and the reality of that comment. What would Andrew do? It is not a problem for Mary, Joy or John. They can simply go and ask him. But Mr Corbell, Mr Stanhope and Ms Gallagher cannot ask him because their relationship is so fractured they cannot go up and actually have a bit of a consultation, a bit of deliberation. They have got to actually imagine, they have got to guess. And this is what we get.

We get what is, in effect, Mr Stanhope, the poor man’s Andrew Barr, trying to lay a few blows across the chamber. We get this: we get Mr Stanhope, the Chief Minister of the territory, coming in here and spending 10 minutes to have a go at kids and to have a go at the Scout movement for the work they do, wanting to have a go at the Scouts. Why not go and write them a letter and say, “I condemn you”? Why not write a letter to every school student in Canberra and say, “I condemn you”? That is what you are doing.

This bill is a heavy-handed bill, a very heavy-handed bill, and it is more about the Chief Minister’s vanity than it is about good governance, much more about the Chief Minister’s vanity than it is about the people of Canberra. This is another one of his personal vendettas. He gets these ideas in his head, and this is run at full speed, and he loses all context of reality. All context of reality is lost by the Chief Minister when he gets sidetracked on issues like this.

It is an amazing and indicative moment, I think, in the life of this Assembly that here we are one year into the four-year term and we have rubbish like this being tabled by the Chief Minister. I hope he is embarrassed. I really do hope he is embarrassed.

I wonder who wrote it for him. Did he write it himself last night? In the middle of the night did he wake up and say, “I am going to get Alistair on this”? I would like to think that he had a speech writer write it, but maybe not.

Chief Minister, I think your response today is an absolute disgrace. I think you should have higher priorities on your agenda, and I hope that you take better action when it comes to actually reforming the bill.

MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (3.26): Firstly, I would like to say how disappointed I am that the government chose not to comment on my comments in their response.

Mr Stanhope: Do not feel left out.

MS LE COUTEUR: I do feel left out because I put considerable effort into actually responding to this legislation in a serious and considered fashion.

This legislation brings up some important issues. I will quote from the Human Rights Commission. Unfortunately we only received their submission the day that we were finalising the committee’s report. I suspect it would have influenced the majority report more had it turned up earlier. I quote from it:


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