Page 3433 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 September 1990
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Mr Jensen: I do not have a problem, Wayne.
MR BERRY: Well, you do have a problem; otherwise you would not have climbed to your feet, Mr Jensen, to oppose the motion. That is what you did - you opposed the motion. You did not say that you supported the amendment; you said that you opposed the motion. You doubted it. You are a doubting person. It may be that the Labor Party has stolen a march in this matter, but the fact of the matter is that all members of the Assembly have a responsibility to the people of Canberra to improve the image of this place. It seems to me that Government members opposite are not prepared to live up to that responsibility.
The fact of the matter is that this is not an issue on which people should take a partisan position. Sure, it was the Labor Party's idea. We are prepared to take credit for that. But I think the members opposite should be prepared to go along with good proposals in a bipartisan way - just as it is often said from their side of the house that we should go along with some of their poor proposals. The fact of the matter is that this measure has been put forward as a positive and progressive move towards improving the image of this Assembly. It will do that, if it is allowed to proceed - and without the sort of criticism that we have had levelled here today.
I just take up one issue, Mr Jensen, concerning the irrelevance of your contribution to this debate. You talked about the hurly-burly of a full and open election process in the Labor Party as having some relevance to the ethics committee. That just indicates how far you are off the track and how stupid your contribution was. You stick to irrelevancies to make a point which does not exist. The fact of the matter is that you are just plain twitchy about being upstaged on a very important moral issue which has to be picked up and addressed by this Assembly in due course. Mr Humphries, of course, has seen the merit of Labor's proposal, even though he has declined to admit it fully.
Mr Collaery: We support the notion, not the motion. Got it?
MR BERRY: He has seen the merit of the motion that has been put up by the Labor Party and, of course, he has moved the procedural motion, which the Labor Opposition will support because it will lead us to ongoing debate about this issue. There is no denying that there needs to be a long and intense debate about an ethics committee for this place because of the odour that the Assembly has. If you cannot stand up and face that issue, you are deluding yourself.
This is an important issue that has to be addressed responsibly until we get a decision of this Assembly which convinces the rest of the people of the ACT - not the people of South Australia, Victoria or New South Wales - that their Assembly does not smell like this one currently
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