Page 3321 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 September 1990
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as well in the Supreme Court? I am sure we would be much more efficient and more cost-effective if that were to happen. It is our responsibility in this Assembly to look at the language of the laws. So much time is spent on trying to interpret what a law says. I have a belief that if a reasonably literate person reads a piece of legislation, reads the law of the land, that person ought to be able to understand it. It should be as simple as that. There is, of course, a great background of law that I would not expect every person to understand.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (4.15): Mr Speaker, I have heard claims by the Opposition that they have a terribly full agenda and that there are issues of burning importance that the people of the ACT wish to debate in their public forum, the Assembly of the Territory, and yet we find this weak and meandering matter of public importance put up for our consideration today. I really wonder why it is necessary for them to scrape the bottom of the barrel in this fashion. It is obvious, as Mr Collaery has said, that this debate is premature. This is not a good time to be debating this matter. The matter is on the public table for the public to comment; it is there for the public to give us politicians and Ministers their views. Yet it is obvious that those opposite are not particularly interested in that; they would rather take their cheap shot now rather than later.
It is a bit like the debate on the schools costings. They would rather hit and run like latter day commandos than actually sit down and properly debate the issues at the appropriate time and in the appropriate place. There is a great consistency, Mr Speaker, in the way the Opposition has approached issues like this. There is a tactic they use. If the Government floats an idea for community consultation, as we floated, in this case, a concept on which we want feedback from the community, immediately the tactic is pounce. The Opposition says the Government is planning to attack this area of public life in the ACT; we are going to change this; we are going to destroy that; we are about to wreck this. This is their tactic with an idea.
If we do not float the idea, of course, we are attacked on the basis that there is no community consultation. They say, "Why have you not spoken to people about this? Why have you not put up public consultation about that?". Again, it is a clear case of the Opposition taking cheap political points because it is convenient to do so.
Mr Kaine: It is sour grapes, because they did not do anything.
MR HUMPHRIES: Absolutely, Mr Kaine. The point is that the Opposition in government took none of these issues to heart. They implemented none of these things, on the feeble basis that they ran out of time. I do not believe that. The fact is, Mr Speaker, that those opposite are
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