Page 1052 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 3 May 2022
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MR HANSON: That is right. He has said he is going to refer himself. That is fine. I do not see why he would not support this motion if he were going to refer himself anyway. It would be odd if, as an Assembly, we would say that we would not support this motion if he were going to refer himself.
Mr Davis: Because I am just going to do what Ms Lawder could have done without the headline.
MR HANSON: Mr Davis continues to interject. I do not think he is helping himself or his cause by doing so. It is quite clear. We should all stick by the rules. We have had debates in here before about referrals to the Commissioner for Standards. I think it is important that we all reconfirm our adherence to the standing orders, to the Code of Conduct and the fact that we will comply. So I support Ms Lawder’s motion today; I think that we all should. There is nothing to hide here. The Commissioner for Standards will hopefully do his job.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (10.31), in reply: The motion is quite clear. The motion refers to the fact that Mr Davis has included his Assembly contact details on the letter distributed throughout the electorate. I seek leave to table a copy of the letter to avoid any doubt as to what is included.
Leave granted.
MS LAWDER: I present the following paper:
Letter from Mr Davis to constituents—Screen shot of Facebook post.
This is an opportunity for this Assembly, for every member of this Assembly, to demonstrate their tolerance, or lack of, for this type of behaviour—to demonstrate that they will set the highest possible levels of culture, of tone and of adherence to the rules. Instead, Madam Speaker, what we are seeing is a bit of a “we’re not going to support this” and talking about process. Mr Rattenbury went straight to process, not to the substance of the issue here. He did not try to defend Mr Davis in any way.
This is about setting a standard, a standard which is already set and which we have all agreed to in the code of conduct, a standard which is reaffirmed and reminded to us by the Clerk every time there is a federal election. Every time! If you do not understand it, you go and get advice.
Mr Davis tried to muddy the waters. There is no mention, no issue here, about who letterboxed it or who paid for it. The issue is the inclusion of the ACT Legislative Assembly contact details on this letter, in effect, using the ACT Legislative Assembly, where we are today, as a campaign office. Because if you have a question or a comment or a concern about this letter that has been circulated, that has been letterboxed in the community, who are you going to call? Who are you going to call? Ah, the contact details on the letter, which, as I have already said, uses this building, that office, the climate controlled office, the desk, the chair, the phone, the email and IT systems: the staff paid for to do ACT business. There is no mention in Mr Davis’s
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