Page 2299 - Week 08 - Thursday, 7 June 1990
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bitterness of their defeat last December - and supported, despite the rhetoric, for reasons that are less than worthy. In attempting to justify themselves, Labor members have said many things which I think they have said often with tongues in cheeks.
They have been guilty of gross distortions and misrepresentation of the facts, just as they have been over the many weeks since they lost government. I refer only to the most recent speaker, the Leader of the Opposition, who talked about my reducing standards in schools and hospitals and cutting, cutting, cutting.
Mr Speaker, I have not yet cut anything - not a single thing - but the Leader of the Opposition gets up and makes that statement as though I have already done these things. That is gross distortion, gross misrepresentation. I am sure that the media are not fooled by it and what goes out to the general public after this debate today will not represent what the Leader of the Opposition has grossly misrepresented. I am quite confident of that; I am sure that the media will report the facts and not the distortions or the misrepresentations.
Mr Stevenson claims that my approach to X-rated videos is a contradiction. He asks how, if I agree they should be banned, I can be prepared to put a tax on them, as though there were some immutable bond between the two things. As has been said this afternoon, the ACT Liberal Party's policy clearly states that both X-rated videos and videos which are excessively violent should be prohibited. That is my personal point of view. I remain committed to that. That view has not changed.
However, the Alliance family policy upon the matter is that the distribution and sale of such videos be confined to areas which are not readily accessible to children. That is not the Liberal Party policy; it is the Alliance Government's policy. When Mr Stevenson's motion to ban X-rated videos was put to the Assembly, I supported it - he knows that - because that supports my own personal view. But clearly it was not the Assembly's wish to ban X-rated videos and consequently they remain unbanned; they remain legal.
Mr Speaker, as you know, as everybody in this Assembly knows, and as the people in the gallery know, I do not lead a Liberal government - I lead an Alliance government - and the consensus of the Alliance partners does not fully support Liberal policy on this matter. That is regrettable, but it is a fact. Neither, incidentally, does this Assembly. My vote is but one amongst the members of three parties, and on many occasions my vote is not with the majority on some issues. That is as it should be. This is a democratic government that I lead. I do not run a Labor Party caucus, where somebody is bulldozed into adopting a position, whether he or she agrees with it or not.
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