Page 2325 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 23 June 2010
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to listen to opposing views, that we continue to hear alternative cases, and I do not believe that it is appropriate for us, as members of the Assembly, to lack the grace to acknowledge that.
I am surprised at the way this has been framed. I think it is beneath this Assembly to make this sort of observation. I think this motion would be a better motion and a motion which is far more appropriate if we simply delete paragraph (d).
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Land and Property Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (7.37): Very quickly, the government is happy to support these two proposals. I must say, again, I do think there is a degree of pedantry in the proposal in relation to (a), but if it provides some comfort for the Greens party I am happy, in the interests of being gracious, to accept that. I must say I do think it is a little unnecessary but I am happy to accept it.
In relation to Mr Rattenbury’s concerns about paragraph (d), again I have to say we will support the Greens’ amendment but what Mrs Dunne has proposed is not untrue.
Mrs Dunne: It is not untrue.
MR STANHOPE: I suppose—
Mrs Dunne: You could stick to your guns.
MR STANHOPE: I will. Actually, on the rationale and the way that Mr Rattenbury provides it, I think we can be gracious; we can accept the diversity of views. I am frustrated from time to time by misinformation campaigns. I find it deeply offensive and insulting, personally, as the person to whom much of the angst is directed, that I have, over the last three years, constantly from those that oppose kangaroo culling, had to face, through letters to the editor, through press releases, through media interviews, charges that all, I, the government, was interested in in culling kangaroos was selling land.
That is misinformation. In fact, it is untrue. They are lies. Not one single kangaroo has been culled in my time as Chief Minister with a view to advancing the potential sale of land—not one kangaroo. Every time that an opponent of kangaroo culling says that, they are doing precisely what Mrs Dunne is suggesting they are doing. It is not just misinformation, they are downright lies. And I find them offensive. I take it on the chin. I turn the page.
Then again, Mr Rattenbury invites us to turn the other cheek, essentially. We are legislators. We have the capacity to show grace and I am prepared to show grace. But in showing that grace and agreeing to remove this, I do not for one minute suggest that it is not true. It is true. Opponents of culling, from time to time, engage in quite outrageous tactics and language, at times outrageous and defamatory language and tactics. And I am happy to say here that, whilst I agree that we can rise above it—we will turn the other cheek, we will agree to remove the paragraph—do not think, for one minute, that I do not think their behaviour at times is simply outrageous.
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