Page 3219 - Week 11 - Thursday, 13 September 1990
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opposition, or anybody else. But we brought three in yesterday, and we have given the house some work.
Mr Collaery: Four.
MRS GRASSBY: We brought three into this house yesterday. We were able to do this. But what has Mr Collaery been able to do? As I said, he is all puff and wind. We hear him babble on about it, but we do not see any results; none whatsoever. It is a sad day in this house to see a Bill of such importance thrown out. It is a sad day for the people of Canberra, and it is a sad day for the people who have been discriminated against out there.
Here they have the rights. This was going to give them the rights and give them an office to do something about it; but Mr Collaery, with all his talk - he is a great talker - does nothing, absolutely nothing. The Residents Rally members sit over there with Norman the storeman, and they talk about how they really believe in the rights of the people. Here they had the chance and they knocked it back, because they did not want this Bill in the house. If Mr Collaery does bring one in, it will be watered down. It will be watered down until it has no power. It will be like a toothless tiger and it will not have any power to do anything. Mr Collaery has shown what he is today: a person who talks, but does not do anything.
MR JENSEN (12.03): That was interesting, Mrs Grassby; rather a fascinating comment. Let me just ask one very important question of the members of the Opposition. If they really wanted to have a wide-ranging debate on this issue, as they claim they want at the moment, why could they not have put the Bill out for public comment? Why could they not have sent it out with all those letters that they have been sending out? They could have sent it out to all the organisations that they have been sending masses of letters out to. Why did they not send it out?
That, of course, Mr Speaker, raises another point. Mrs Grassby has raised the issue: why did not Mr Collaery come across and talk to their leader about this issue, if he thought there were some problems with it? Mrs Grassby, I ask you - through you, Mr Speaker: why did not Ms Follett come across to the Attorney-General if she was so keen to have a bipartisan approach to this important issue in the ACT? Why did not she seek to have a meeting with the Attorney-General, or send Mr Connolly, as the so-called shadow Attorney-General, to discuss the issue with him? But no, they did not propose to do that at all, because clearly this is a cheap political trick. They knew full well that section 65 of the self-government Act is very different from the relevant provisions provided for in the Australian Constitution and also provided for in the Northern Territory.
Our Act was written a long time after both the Constitution and, of course, the Northern Territory Act. Why, after all
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