Page 4905 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 26 November 1991
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MR COLLAERY: I am not going to help. I will not use privilege to name the person. It was an unfortunate situation. It is not on. Some of us are involved in quite fractious issues in the community. Some of us are involved in human rights issues and in ethnic community matters. If members wish to come to my home, they will see carved in every gum tree bar two the Ustasha symbol. You should know in this house that there is a great deal of reaction to those of us who take strong lines on human rights issues. You leave our staff and the public servants who work in this building exposed. I say again that it has no precedent elsewhere in this land.
I do not know the level of access given to Mr Connolly - I presume that it is the same as I had - to NCA documentation of great sensitivity. I do not know what he does with it in the dark hours. I do not know whether the authorities that supply quite sensitive information to the Attorney in this Territory are aware that during certain of the dark hours this building remains unguarded. I will go no further. I will not tell Mr Connolly what time limits should be on the safe and on the security containers that I believe he probably uses in his suite. It is a disgrace.
The Executive have not provided sufficient security for their own Ministers - or security for documents, if they are not concerned about their Ministers. It will woe betide you if some of our hardworking staff and the public servants in this building are injured because of a most unfortunate incident - which can happen, as we all know. Those who were at the demonstrations concerning Timor, the Balkans and China will know that some people are deeply distressed and disturbed about issues. It is no time for us to have cancelled the security on this building. I am glad that my comments are on the record. I trust that I will never be proven dead right.
The next issue I want to raise is the failure to put into the Estimates a provision for electorate offices for members. I think the next Assembly will be far better if we can get out of the public service trap we are in. We know that the public service organised this chamber. They organised it for an opposition and a government. Yet, even before the election, Mr Kaine and I were talking publicly about the need to look at more collegiate working structures for this chamber. The public service went ahead and arranged "them and us" seating in this chamber. They arranged the make-up of it. You can see how they quartered us. We are the third entity named on the signboard out in the plaza. It lists the ACT Administration, something else and then down below, by the way, your local politicians. The local people probably will not think much of that.
In this building we are trapped by the public service; we are trapped by the bureaucracy. We need to get out of this building. It costs more than $300-odd a square metre. I believe that it would be economically sound for a number of
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