Page 2114 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 9 September 1992
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Mr Humphries: How do you know?
Mr Lamont: Because you have just admitted it. You said that it was the same MPI. It was a shonky deal.
Mr Cornwell: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. If the Leader of the Opposition is not going to ask Mr Lamont to withdraw, I most certainly ask him to withdraw the words "shonky deal".
Mr Lamont: As I did say "shonky deal" just a moment ago, I withdraw.
MR HUMPHRIES (3.04): Madam Speaker, we on this side of the house have been concerned for some time about the Government's pace of progress on the very important and pressing question of Hare-Clark in the ACT.
Ms Follett: You wanted us to go slow on marijuana.
MR HUMPHRIES: The Chief Minister interjects something to the effect that she is getting on with the job and things are happening. Of course, we heard that yesterday. We heard the Chief Minister say in wounded tones that her Government is certainly not dragging its feet on electoral reform; it is certainly getting right behind this important question at great speed and producing important results and getting on with the job.
Madam Speaker, I have been in this place long enough to treat those sorts of claims, when they are not substantiated in the Assembly, with enormous suspicion. Today is no exception. We have heard before the claim that action is well under way on this important question, but the evidence of that action has been painfully limited. We were reassured that a timetable would be adopted which would see the Hare-Clark system in place in the ACT well before the next election.
Indeed, remarkably, the Chief Minister said that as of the end of 1993 there would be a complete Hare-Clark system in place in the ACT. That is not much more than 12 months away. With the greatest respect to the Chief Minister, I believe that she is setting herself an absolutely mammoth task, given the lack of action so far on this question, if she is going to meet that deadline. But we will see. I will be the first to congratulate her on the last sitting day of next year if indeed she has achieved that objective. I have my doubts. We have seen and heard before rhetoric on the part of this Government about their fabulous pace of action, about how they are getting on with the job; but in this case the facts just do not back that up.
Madam Speaker, I ask members to cast their minds back to 23 June this year, shortly after the Liberal Party began to raise the question of just what the Government was doing about Hare-Clark in this place and in this Territory. On that occasion the Chief Minister, stung into action, organised a dorothy dix question from Mrs Grassby. Mrs Grassby asked:
Can the Chief Minister explain to the Assembly what steps the Government has taken to implement the new electoral system for the ACT?
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