Page 3210 - Week 11 - Thursday, 13 September 1990
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it is unreasonable, on the face of it, and I would like to know what the parliament across the lake had in mind when it put this particular prescription in here. I wonder whether it intended it to have the effect that it does, or to carry the connotations that it does carry.
Mr Speaker, rather than arguing the point every time the Opposition wants to put a Bill on the table, I think the solution to this problem is whether we should not be asking a committee, or setting up another committee, or asking an independent person or body to review the self-government Acts - all of them - and to make recommendations as to what course of action this parliament should follow when approaching the Commonwealth to have the things changed in these Acts that we do not think are appropriate. I think that this is probably the direction that we should take. We have acrimonious debates from time to time on these issues. I think this is unproductive; it is unnecessary. We should be doing something to change it in principle rather than arguing about the symptoms.
MS FOLLETT (Leader of the Opposition) (11.28): Mr Speaker, I am afraid to say that Mr Collaery has again, yet again, absolutely amazed me by the depths to which he will plummet to discredit himself totally. I genuinely believed that Mr Collaery had an interest in human rights. Indeed, he built a reputation on it.
Mr Collaery: No-one out there is going to listen to this nonsense of yours.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Collaery, please!
MS FOLLETT: Mr Speaker, as I was saying, I had genuinely believed in Mr Collaery's commitment to human rights, and at the time when we were in government I was not happy with the fact that while we were in government we were unable to produce human rights legislation during the seven months that we were there. I believe that Mr Collaery is similarly unhappy with the fact that he has not been able to produce human rights legislation in the eight or nine months that he has been in government.
It is a problem of drafting. It is not an easy matter to deal with in a drafting office and Mr Collaery has not been able to produce the goods. That fact, of course, would concern him, just as it concerned us both in government and in opposition. I believe this is an absolutely essential piece of legislation for the ACT, to bring the protection offered to ACT citizens into line with that offered to citizens elsewhere in Australia.
The piece of legislation that I introduced yesterday, as I said yesterday, implemented a promise which I made on the very first day that this Assembly sat. I do not go back on my promises. I introduced that piece of legislation in the genuine belief that it would add to the quality of life in the ACT, that it would protect some people who would
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