Page 1843 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 15 June 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MRS CARNELL: Why? The TAB makes money and Totalcare did not when the ACT Government ran it. If that is the only reason - - -
Mr Connolly: The ACT Government still runs it.
Mr De Domenico: It still runs the TAB, too.
MRS CARNELL: It still runs the TAB, too. It is totally appropriate that this Bill be referred to a committee. It will allow this important issue to be handled in a non-partisan way. It will be an opportunity for those who wish to be heard to be recorded in Hansard, and it will give us, as an Assembly, the opportunity to actually be a credible force and to come forward with a proposal that would actually work.
MR HUMPHRIES (10.11): Madam Speaker, I support this motion because I think that this Bill is a vagrant Bill - it has no visible means of support. It is devoid of the cold, hard logic which I think ought to underpin any piece of legislation that comes before this house. I have not seen fully enunciated in the presentation speech, or anywhere else for that matter, arguments which support the change that is going to take place, and this is an increasing feature of legislation brought down by this Government. This presentation speech - it was presented last month, not eight months ago - describes what the Bill does without saying why it does what it does.
Mrs Carnell: Because there is no good reason.
MR HUMPHRIES: Because, as my colleague Mrs Carnell says, there is no good reason. At least none has been presented. I searched hard through the speech that Mr Berry gave for cold, hard logical reasons why this change should take place. I was disturbed by the amount of prattle I heard from him in the course of his speech. He rambled from the Pharmacists Board to the position of MLAs' names on letters, to having received a cheque for $60,000 by mistake, and all these sorts of issues.
Mr Berry: No, it was not by mistake; it was deliberate.
Ms Follett: That is the company structure.
MR HUMPHRIES: Well, it was a mistake for you to receive the cheque, presumably; it should not have been sent to you. Madam Speaker, we have all these sorts of issues ranged across by the Minister, but nothing that indicates why he is proceeding with legislation which is not sought by the industry it affects, which is not required by the performance of the corporation concerned and which is not being sought by the general public of the ACT in what constitutes a kind of ground swell of public opinion in favour of some change to correct some problem. Nor is it being sought by the legislature or, necessarily, by even all the elements of the Government. It seems to me, Madam Speaker, to be very much the baby, the protege, solely of the Minister for Sport, Mr Berry. He wants this to happen and he is going to make sure that it happens, irrespective of whether the arguments in favour of it stack up in the least fashion.
Mr Berry did mention privatisation. In fact he practically spewed privatisation forth at every available opportunity. I think that the repeated use of that word indicates the ideological flavour of this debate.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .