Page 3033 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 5 December 1989
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Mr Moore: Don't take it personally, Dennis. They didn't speak to me either.
MR STEVENSON: Mr Moore earlier said, "This is a simple grab for power". Well, that is not true. No grab for power is simple. The Labor Government well understood that on or about 11 May and the alliance well understands it now. I think what is important is that we follow our conscience in matters before the Assembly. Many people have wondered, through the months since self-government was formed and before then during the campaign, why it was that the No Self Government Party and the Abolish Self Government Coalition never amalgamated. I can understand why they had that question, but there were a number of reasons. The major reason was that I considered it not to be the thing to do. We were serious about abolishing it, and I am not sure that some of the other people were. At one time I spoke to Mr Duby, I think after the election, and said, "If we could bring it down by all resigning, what would you think?". But that was not met with approval. I am not sure that that would have done it, but I was interested in following the possibility.
On 11 May the No Self Government Party elected the Labor Party to power. A bit later on, during a motion to call an inquiry into self-government, I moved an amendment because there was something missing in the motion that Mr Duby presented. What was missing was a look at self-government itself. So my amendment suggested that there be a new item 1 as a term of reference, and that item was to look at the constitutional legality of the ACT Assembly. I thought that was a fairly interesting way to bring about the abolition of self-government, because indeed anybody who read the Australian constitution would understand there are about five sections there that would make it unconstitutional to give the seat of government - the nation's capital - away to some other government. I called for a division, and unfortunately I lost by 16 to one. I believe it will not be the last time that happens.
Today the No Self Government Party had the opportunity to give Canberrans another chance, a chance to have their say on self-government. I do not believe self-government would have been abolished, although there was an outside chance, very outside, but certainly the Assembly could have, as we had the balance of power. Whether we would have lost our seats or won more seats or whatever, what a way to go!
Today, the No Self Government Party will elect a Liberal-Rally alliance to power with themselves included, and that grouping will have the numbers. Mr Humphries mentioned earlier that, if you do not have the numbers, you sink into the mire of mediocrity or some such thing. I would ask: why is that? I understand that government is the 17 people in this Assembly, not five, not 10, not eight or whatever. Every person in this Assembly has been elected by the people of Canberra to represent their wishes. Their wishes
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