Page 1098 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 23 June 1992
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That is about 170 hours. There are 170 hours for this community to understand, in the welter of a complex and emotional debate, what this Government has in mind for thousands of human lives yet to be born. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
We never saw, I believe, before last week the full scope of the Government's intentions, and I am not convinced that we have seen them even now. According to the front page of the Canberra Times today, apparently more is in store for us. Apparently new abortion facilities are at the top of the new spending agenda in the health portfolio. Why can we not be told what this Government has in mind for this community?
Mr Moore: Because it is not relevant to this Bill.
MR HUMPHRIES: It is relevant to this Bill. What is happening in our city today, Madam Speaker, I would say, is a vicious mockery of the promise that self-government brought to this community. The Federal Government said that with self-government we, the residents of the ACT, would be able to make decisions of our own, set standards of our own, and pursue goals of our own. The promise was that no longer would the Federal Government need to interpret our requirements and our priorities. Now it was up to us to make our own decisions.
We have to ask how was this opportunity to make our own decisions actually to take place. The answer, of course, is that we would have the same power that other citizens in other States have to determine their priorities, namely, by parties and by candidates in ACT elections setting out their respective visions of how our city should appear, and then inviting the electors to choose which of those visions most suit them. Of course, Madam Speaker, we had an election in the ACT in the last five months. We had an election and a Labor government was elected. Who can recall in that recent election the ACT Labor Party, in its statement of its vision for the ACT, saying, for example, that it planned to build a freestanding abortion clinic? I cannot. Neither, apparently, can those opposite.
Mr Berry: The debate is not about that.
MR HUMPHRIES: The debate is about that, Mr Berry. The debate is about that and the whole question of whether we, in this Territory, are going to tolerate high levels of abortion of unborn people. Did the Labor Party table a press release saying, "We intend to make abortion a major issue in the life of the Second Assembly"? If they did, would they please table that press release. Where is the newspaper report? Where is the tape of the interview? Where is the evidence that there was something about this?
Mr Connolly: You paid for a full page ad.
MR HUMPHRIES: You denied those reports, Mr Connolly. You denied those reports, remember? You said that they were not true. Well, they were true, were they not? Did you deceive the people of the ACT when you said that? I will leave it to the electors to decide whether you did or you did not. Nobody would recall it being said by the Australian Labor Party, because it was not, in fact, said. It was apparently so ashamed of this part of its branch platform that it made not one reference to it during the entire ACT election campaign that ended in February.
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