Page 799 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 March 1991
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Weapons Legislation
MR CONNOLLY (9.42): Mr Speaker, I do not usually rise to challenges by Mr Stevenson, but I could not let this one go by. I told him that I would speak, but he scarpered nonetheless. He got up in high dudgeon after my remarks on the weapons legislation and challenged me to show where he had said a number of things that I had alleged he had said. He just recently said to me, "I did not say that I did not say them; I just asked you to prove where I said them". Well, in a press release issued on 9 March, headed "Alliance Gun Law Farce", he says:
This Bill says on page 5,(2), "A person shall be taken to have possession of a dangerous weapon ... if - (a) the weapon is on ... any premises occupied by the person.
That is the quote from the Bill. Then, in Dennis' words, it says:
When you realise that "occupier" includes anyone who is "reasonably believed to be in charge of the premises"; you understand that someone's spouse, flatmate, house-sitter or mother-in-law could be guilty of possessing a "dangerous weapon" when they may not even know it exists. But this is only one of many such examples of dreadful legislation.
There we have in the press release exactly the sort of mischievous and misleading statement that I have referred to. I do not intend to dignify Dennis' challenge any further, but there it is in his own words.
Mr Duby: Table it.
MR CONNOLLY: I am quite happy to table it.
Leave granted.
Gulf War : Motion of Censure
MR BERRY (9.43): Mr Speaker, I have to rise and express some heartfelt outrage at some of the things that were said by Mr Stefaniak in relation to the war that has just passed by. Mr Stefaniak said in an interjection that it worked, and he said during the course of the debate that it was a good war. I, for the life of me, cannot accept that any war is a good war. I cannot, for the life of me, accept that a war is a good war if there are massive casualties on one side and just a few on the other.
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