Page 1680 - Week 06 - Thursday, 13 August 1992
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MR STEVENSON: Or what it does not mean. Thank you, Mr De Domenico. This is relevant. If we have someone doing a Smoky Dawson type of act visiting the national capital, perhaps to commemorate a particular time, and he happens to have a couple of horses and even a cow wandering around, will that come within the definition of "rodeo", as it does within the dictionary definitions?
It is all very well to suggest that someone's viewpoint is nonsense; but it is unfortunate to suggest that when it obviously is not, when it is simply the political viewpoint of wanting to make yourself right and others wrong. We need to change that throughout Australia - in this Assembly and everywhere else. We need to change the situation. It has been said time and again that we need to work as a committee of the whole. We need to come along here and be able to present - - -
Mr Moore: That is why we have committees, Dennis, and you do not participate in them.
MR STEVENSON: "Of the whole", I said, not three or five or whatever.
Mr Moore: As a starting point.
MR STEVENSON: Why not do it as a committee of the whole in this Assembly? Is that not the reason parliaments were set up? Is that not the true idea behind this place? People in the community can come along and listen to us present different viewpoints and see those viewpoints acknowledged by other members in this Assembly without feeling that if they make a change they will be wrong. Mr Moore does not have that concern. You can change your mind without feeling that you are wrong, can't you, Mr Moore? There is nothing wrong with changing one's mind. That is the truth of the matter.
I was at a seminar recently and someone said that the most valuable thing you can do in life is make mistakes, because it is from mistakes that we learn. We should not jump on somebody simply because they have made a mistake. What I find most disconcerting is the refusal to acknowledge that one has made a simple mistake; the refusal to genuinely, openly and honestly listen to a debate and say, "I think you have a point; I will check it out", or "Obviously, you have a point". To stand up in this Assembly as the Minister has, and to sit down in this Assembly as the Attorney-General has, and to say that this particular clause, where it says, "It is an offence to promote a rodeo", is open to interpretation is a lack of fair and just operation, and no number of people making any other statement on the matter will change that. It is not benefiting this Assembly. It is not benefiting the people of the ACT. It is not a matter of making people wrong or right, but simply doing the best job we can to enact good legislation.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.04): Madam Speaker, in three days of filibuster, members opposite - the Liberal Party and Mr Stevenson - have done what I thought would have been impossible. They have reduced, in public estimation, this Second Assembly to about the standard we had in the First Assembly.
Mr De Domenico: No, your Bill has done that, Mr Connolly.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order!
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