Page 5591 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 4 December 1991
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MR COLLAERY (6.20): Mr Speaker, for the record and from the Alliance historic viewpoint, and to again demonstrate how issues within a bureaucracy survive the vicissitudes of politicians, when these provisions came before the Alliance Cabinet we had a very strong protest by the ACT Law Society. The ACT Cabinet resolved to ask that these matters be re-examined to see whether they complied with conventional civil liberty standards. We left government, to the best of my knowledge, before the matter came back. The provisions have survived and I wonder whether the Labor Government - I know the Cabinet convention - was in any way acquainted with the fact that the previous Government had had a difficulty with that draft.
Mr Berry: You had lots of difficulties.
MR COLLAERY: Here is a left wing, union-backgrounded person making light of search and entry and seizure. That is amazing.
Mr Berry: No, no; I said that you had lots of difficulties.
MR COLLAERY: I sure did. Let us put one thing on the record. One morning some years ago, in my section 10 solicitor's premises, when I was robing to go to court, I was raided. On the very morning that I was going to the Federal Court to argue the Rocky Knoll matter, my office was raided. I was raided, back door and front door. It was timed. It was a deliberately bureaucratically inspired or politically inspired - I withdraw "bureaucratically inspired" - raid and visit upon my premises.
So, if a prominent leader of the Rally, as I then was, who was giving an adviser to a former Federal Minister a hard time politically on issues, can be so blatantly raided, how would these provisions be used if that member ever got back into government? I wonder. The fact of the matter is that a lot of us have some grim experience about the manner - - -
Mr Connolly: What were they raiding you for?
Mr Jensen: Section 10 compliance. It is the truth.
MR COLLAERY: It is the absolute truth. There were members of the community present when that raid occurred and there was an attempt by those bureaucrats to identify members of the public in my home early in the morning. It was an outrageous intrusion on my lifestyle. Some weeks before, another gnome got me out of bed in my premises.
Mr Berry: You were in breach of your lease, weren't you?
MR COLLAERY: Too right, I was in compliance with my lease. On another occasion, Mr Berry - through you, Mr Speaker - when I was about to go down to Cooma court to prosecute a member of the Morosi family over the Mount Oak affair and the matter had been cancelled, I was again visited. It had
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