Page 1670 - Week 06 - Thursday, 13 August 1992

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going to pass these laws into practice until we have sorted it all out via the codes of practice". I suggest that those codes of practice should be adopted before we pass the legislation, not after we pass it. I made the point before that our senior responsibility is to pass good legislation. I made the point that we are not saying that legislation should not be passed. We could have done this in a far more harmonious manner. We could have done this in a far better way.

Mr Moore: By moving censure motions?

MR STEVENSON: No. A number of the members opposite would have passed this legislation two months ago. Let me give one example: Mr Moore has introduced a change that would allow primates. Yet I suggest that when Mr Moore moved that amendment he did not know that you could not have a circus coming to Canberra that had in it a dozen gorillas imported recently from the wild.

I suggest that Mr Moore may have thought, after that point was mentioned to him, that that would not be possible; that they would not allow them to be brought into Australia. But that is not knowledge; that is a thought. That is a viewpoint; that is not law. I suggest that we should more often operate on law, not on viewpoints. When we have a Minister stand up and literally pretend that he is a teacher, saying, "Let me read the book. Turn to page 1. The ACT - - -

Mr Moore: That is what has got to you.

MR STEVENSON: Let me mention something. I train regularly. When I have a student who says that he is silly because he did not get something, I have maintained for many years that it is not the student who is stupid, it is the person trying to train him. Ask any of the students I train. I say that it is my responsibility; I am simply not explaining myself well.

MADAM SPEAKER: Your time has expired, Mr Stevenson. The question is: That Mr Stevenson's motion be agreed to.

Motion (by Mr Moore) put:

That the question be now put.

The Assembly voted -

AYES, 10  NOES, 7 

Mr Berry Mrs Carnell
Mr Connolly Mr Cornwell
Ms Ellis Mr De Domenico
Ms Follett Mr Humphries
Mrs Grassby Mr Kaine
Mr Lamont Mr Stevenson
Ms McRae Mr Westende
Mr Moore
Ms Szuty
Mr Wood

Question so resolved in the affirmative.


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