Page 4002 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 16 December 1992
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What this motion of no confidence is about is my behaviour in relation to this matter. As I have said, Health, under my administration, has administered this particular law in the same way as it has been administered in the past. Mr Stevenson makes claims about the meaning of the law, but it has never turned up in a court. I would have to say that, if it had done so and there had been a particular view of the court, people might have had a view one way or the other which conformed with the express view of a court; but that, of course, on my understanding of it, has not occurred.
My approach to this entire matter has been on the basis of advice from my department. That, very clearly, has a health bias and, as far as I am concerned, on health grounds we have behaved impeccably. As a result of the confusion and debate which has occurred in the community, because of the claims about the way that HIV and AIDS were being notified in the Territory, members here had the opportunity to debate how we would deal with the issue of HIV and AIDS in the ACT and, thankfully, they supported my view and the view of the Government in relation to the notification of HIV and AIDS. That occurred in only recent times when a motion for disallowance of the regulations was moved by the Liberals. That resulted in the defeat of the motion. The regulations now make the position in relation to HIV and AIDS abundantly clear. It is also clear that there are still people out there who disagree with the approach that is being taken by the Government. The Government, in my view, is correct on this one, and those who disagree with the Government in relation to this matter are wrong. If they had their way we would have to deal with an explosion of AIDS in the community, an explosion which we quite easily can avoid by this process.
This entire issue, in my view, has nothing to do with a particular view of the law; it is merely a view about the process of dealing with AIDS. If the members of this Assembly wish to express a vote of no confidence in me because of the way that I have handled the notification of AIDS in the ACT, let them do it. I am confident that I am right on this. I have the backing of the Intergovernmental Committee on AIDS. I have had the majority support of this Assembly, and I expect that I will continue to have it.
If Mr Stevenson's view is held by some to be correct, they should keep in mind the recent facts. I have declared very clearly the Government's position in relation to the notification of AIDS. There has been no secret about it. I have been unswerving in that regard, and I will continue to be. Where the matter needed to be sorted out, we did it. We made it very clear that we intended to change the law to provide a very clear and unambiguous position for everybody who would read the legislation. I am not going to say that the conflicting views about what the law meant were right or wrong in any respect, because so far as I know they have not been tested on either side.
Mr Stevenson also talked at some length about the process which Dr Proudfoot had been subjected to, the quite ordinary process with freedom of information, and the testing of the freedom of information in various jurisdictions. It was quite normal. The matter is now before the courts and, so far as that part of it is concerned, it would be quite inappropriate for me to discuss those aspects.
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