Page 3617 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 19 October 1993
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Government members: Ha, ha!
MR HUMPHRIES: Those opposite laugh. I defy you to find where we have made a demand or a suggestion that has not subsequently been taken up by this Government in respect of Mabo. That is the challenge. We said from the outset that that was the appropriate course of action to take.
Mr Connolly: Mr Keating will get up tomorrow and say, "It was all Gary Humphries. Thank you very much".
MR HUMPHRIES: It was not only my call. There were plenty of people around Australia calling for that to happen. The Chief Minister of the ACT was notable by her exception to that. She was notable by saying to members of the media after the conference that she thought the Liberals' suggestions that there should be validating legislation was scaremongering. Those were her very words. But that is the position she has now taken - that there needs to be validating legislation.
I think the people of the ACT might reflect on the fact that the government of the day loudly proclaimed that there was no need for such legislation, that the suggestions that there could be any threat to title in the ACT - - -
Ms Follett: Tell the truth.
MR HUMPHRIES: The Chief Minister clearly said, as did her Attorney-General, who bought into the issue for some reason which was not clear - - -
Mr Berry: You would not know how to tell the truth, Gary.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, I think Mr Berry said that I was not telling the truth.
Mr Berry: No, I said that you would not know how to.
MR HUMPHRIES: I think that is the same thing, Madam Speaker. I would ask him to withdraw.
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Berry, I think you should withdraw that.
Mr Berry: I will withdraw. He did not even get that right, Madam Speaker.
MR HUMPHRIES: The fact of life is that both Mr Connolly and Ms Follett did loudly accuse opponents of their position - not just us, I point out - by saying that calls for validating legislation in the ACT were premature and that the suggestions that native title might successfully be found in the ACT were unnecessary. Mr Connolly surely recalls having said that.
Whatever the element of doubt, it was obviously large enough to persuade the Prime Minister, and in turn his loyal ACT Chief Minister, to accept that that should be the case and promise to do just that. I hope that in future the rhetoric and the lip-service that is paid by members of the Labor Party to the need for a bipartisan approach on questions of Aboriginal affairs and the consequences of the Mabo decision might translate into an attempt to work out a successful approach that acknowledges that perhaps on some occasions we were right, and we were right from the beginning.
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