Page 1465 - Week 05 - Thursday, 13 May 1993
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ADJOURNMENT
Motion (by Mr Berry) proposed:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Ambit Claims
MR LAMONT (5.04): Madam Speaker, it gives me much pleasure this afternoon to rise to address my comments in this adjournment debate by way of a letter to the editor which this afternoon I intend to let the Assembly become aware of. This is, I understand, a new and novel way of announcing that somebody has goofed, that they have misunderstood, or that the press has got it right, and you want to make sure that you tell your Assembly colleagues that they got it wrong before they produce the letter which actually says that you know that they got it right the day before, if you understand what I am saying, which seems to be the rationale, as I understand what was in Hansard yesterday, for the current Leader of the Opposition's comment about a proposed letter, which I did not see in today's paper, that she intended to put in yesterday.
Mrs Carnell: I did, but they did not print it.
MR LAMONT: Well, there you go. I do hope that they print this. This one is addressed "Dear Editor" and is entitled "Ms Carnell and Ambit Claims". This is very simple. I need to keep it simple so that you will understand it. The reason why this is here is that ambit claims should be something which the Liberal Party in particular, given current shenanigans in their party room, should be quite familiar with. Mr De Domenico's ambit claim for the leadership meant that Mr De Domenico would become the Leader of the Opposition. We all know that that did not occur. What happened was that Mr De Domenico got Deputy Leader of the Opposition. If you follow that, you should also follow the principles of ambit claims where unions say, "We want 52 weeks' annual leave"; but when they negotiate with their one vote they end up with four weeks' annual leave. Mr De Domenico, given the fact that you had exercised a great deal of ambit claim in all of your public utterances about becoming the Leader of the Opposition, I thought you would have understood today, or at least have been able to advise the current Leader of the Opposition, what an ambit claim is. This seems not to be the case.
The reason why I believe that this letter to the Canberra Times should be printed is so that all Canberrans are able to see that this is what the Liberal Party have now been reduced to. They have been reduced to advice being given to Mrs Carnell by the current Deputy Leader of the Opposition, one-vote-Tony. The current Deputy Leader of the Opposition, one-vote-Tony, has been providing advice to Mrs Carnell, obviously, about industrial relations because Mrs Carnell, again obviously, does not understand. I would have presumed that that eminent lawyer, the ex Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the ex Leader of the Opposition, the ex Deputy Leader of the Opposition and the recently retired Deputy Leader of the Opposition, would also have understood, as a lawyer, what the legal process is for submitting an ambit claim. Obviously, he has not been able to do that, Madam Speaker. That is pretty obvious. He has not understood what ambit
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