Page 3638 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 8 December 1992
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The other point that I wish to make, which I forgot to do earlier, is this: I wave a lovely rainbow coloured selection of documents. This demonstrates the extent of the community consultation. This is the range of pamphlets that have been circulating in the community since early this year advising people of this Bill. The process of community consultation on this legislation has been extensive and massive, and you people are thumbing your noses at it. Madam Speaker, the Government strongly opposes this motion because the Government wishes to deliver modern, up-to-date adoption legislation to the people of Canberra. We do not think that the people of Canberra should be the last in Australia to enjoy that.
MR MOORE (9.10): Madam Speaker, it is a pity that Mr Connolly chose this method to attempt to whip up the community. The reality is that had he wanted to keep his promise he did not have to delay the Bill by introducing it at this stage in December. He could have got it through his Cabinet process much earlier. That is the reality of the situation. This Minister could have got it to us the sitting beforehand and we would have had time to deal with it appropriately. To put a Bill on the table in a sitting week and expect with one week's break that the rest of the members will then say, "Carte blanche, okay, away you go, that is fine, Minister", is entirely inappropriate.
If Mr Connolly is right in saying that the members of the Adoptive Families Association think that Labor has done an absolutely wonderful job on this, and if the rest of us believe that the processes of this parliament need to be appropriate and we need to be held accountable and responsible for our decisions and the way we make them, then so be it. That is the way it goes. The reality is, Madam Speaker, that Mr Connolly has given some commitment that he would push this through this year. It was a commitment that he was not entitled to give. He can give a commitment that he will do his best, and there is no doubt that he has done his best, and nobody can take that away from him, to get this Bill through this year.
There is going to be a minor delay at the most. My understanding was that this Bill, like many Bills, was going to take at least six months to deal with. It seems to me, Madam Speaker, that we have to make appropriate decisions on the way we deal with each Bill. It was said that the Bill sat on the table for just on three weeks. Two of those were sitting weeks, and in the third week almost every backbench member here spent at least half the time sitting on committees - - -
Mr De Domenico: The Territory Plan, for a start.
MR MOORE: Apart from dealing with the Territory Plan that was released and a series of other things.
Mr Lamont: The Territory Plan took 15 minutes.
MR MOORE: Madam Speaker, I hear an interjection from Mr Lamont that the Territory Plan took him 15 minutes. He is an incredible speed reader if that is the way he dealt with it, unless I have misinterpreted him.
The other issue is that Mr Connolly suggested that Mrs Carnell has made 127 statements or something along those lines. His staff have looked in the media to see what sorts of statements people have made. I dare to inform Mr Connolly that some members make their comments in other places. Some of us make comments as well for the electronic media, both radio and television, and we also
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