Page 3434 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 25 November 1992
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Mr Stevenson: Why don't you stop telling lies?
MADAM SPEAKER: It is too late now. The question before the Assembly is that the member be suspended.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Stevenson, you are suspended from the service of the Assembly for three hours.
Ms Follett: You are a disgrace.
Mr Stevenson: The disgrace is the lies, and you know it.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order, Mr Stevenson!
Mr Stevenson: You did it yesterday as well.
MADAM SPEAKER: You have been suspended.
Mr Stevenson: And I am off. Read the evidence and stop telling lies.
Mr Stevenson thereupon withdrew from the chamber.
MR BERRY: Madam Speaker, it is a pity that Mr Stevenson took the line he did, because I am sure he would have wanted to respond to the debate on the amendment he put before the chamber. I am left on the horns of a dilemma. I wish that he were in a position to debate the issue, but I will proceed anyway. It seems to me that the approach by Mr Stevenson in attempting to put his scent on this matter has been purely for political reasons rather than to look at the facts which are before the people of the Australian Capital Territory.
Before the last election Labor made it very clear what their position was in relation to the Acton Peninsula site. We said that we would retain the site as a public health facility. In a paper which was publicly available to the community entitled "Building a Better Health System: Better for Canberra" we said that we would set out over the next three years to implement our policy of a public health facility on that site, with rehabilitation and aged care services, a convalescent facility, the Queen Elizabeth II home for mothers and babies, and a hospice.
Mr Stevenson wants to overturn the specifics in that. That is not something that the Labor Government is comfortable with, because we want to retain our commitment, very clearly and publicly made for the community of the ACT to police. It is quite inconsistent for the broad-ranging description which has been put forward by Mr Stevenson to be implemented. I do not know his reasons for it. I just do not see that there - - -
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! It being 12.30 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 77 as amended by temporary order.
Sitting suspended from 12.30 to 2.30 pm
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