Page 3427 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 2010
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But the people of Canberra were not fooled and the people of Canberra voted him straight out of office back in 1996. In fact, I understand he was the only member of the Liberal Party in the parliament at that time that lost his seat.
Mr Smyth: No. I think you’re wrong.
MR STANHOPE: Mr Smyth thinks that somebody else did too.
Mr Smyth: You should get your facts straight.
MR STANHOPE: I am not sure that is true.
Mr Smyth: You should get your facts straight.
MR STANHOPE: This is a little bit of history, and it is history that we see an increasingly desperate Gary Humphries very aware of. This happened once before in 1996 with an incumbent Liberal too afraid, lacking the courage and the personality, to stand up and to defend his electorate. Mr Smyth failed in 1996, and the result of that was that Mr Smyth was knocked off. You see Gary Humphries’s behaviour and his attitude and his desperation. There is somebody looking over Senator Humphries’s shoulder at the moment too, in the form of an incredibly capable and credible Greens candidate standing ready to defend the people of Canberra, standing up for the people of Canberra, and I must say I hope, and I think all of the people of Canberra hope, that the people of Canberra will deliver to Gary Humphries exactly the same verdict that they delivered to Brendan Smyth back in 1996, and for the same reason—refusing to stick up for this community. (Time expired.)
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (4.56): What a surprise to hear the Labor Party cheering on the Greens! We had the Greens earlier today defending the Labor Party backwards and forwards like a game of tennis in this chamber. Mr Stanhope spent much of his speech talking about Mr Smyth’s electoral history—he got elected here and did not get elected there, and Mr Humphries got elected here and so on. And that is what this matter of public importance is about. This is simply about the Greens trying to get some oxygen for their Senate candidate.
Let us be clear. This is not about Meredith Hunter having any genuine concern for Canberra. She has actually come into this place on a matter of public importance, read a speech in the most uninspiring manner, with absolutely no interest or passion, and then left this chamber. I assume she has gone somewhere else of great importance but it just demonstrates the interest that she displays in her own matter of public importance.
I think that the Senate candidate for the ACT, Gary Humphries, has been an outstanding representative of the ACT and I think that he has put the ACT and the needs of the people of the ACT above his own party at times. He has crossed the floor. He has represented the ACT far better than the federal representatives of the ACT that we see from the Labor Party. And if Gary Humphries were to lose his seat, it would be a disaster for the people of Canberra, for a number of reasons.
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