Page 1589 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 17 May 1994
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MR KAINE: Why are we doing this? Mr Connolly, the Attorney-General, interjects. The Attorney-General's role is to protect the rights of the citizens of the ACT. He is not concerned about the rights of people in Victoria. His job is to protect the rights of citizens here, and he should listen carefully to what I have to say on this issue.
Why is the Government moving to set aside the rights of individuals in the ACT, and there could be a large number of them? It is moving to set them aside in the interests of two corporations. One is New South Wales lotteries; the other is Tattersalls. These are corporations that set themselves up in a commercial operation. If people had set themselves up in the business of selling groceries and, because of their ineptitude, had laid themselves open to a loss, this Assembly would not be considering passing legislation to protect their rights. If a manufacturing corporation that could not set up its production line properly, or could not organise its distribution, or could not organise its marketing in such a fashion as to make a profit, ended up making a loss we would not be enacting this kind of legislation. Here we have a government that, in the interests of two corporations, has brought in a Bill to set aside the rights of individual citizens that exist today but which, if we pass this Bill, will not exist tomorrow.
I do not understand how a government can put that sort of a proposition forward. There are rights that exist today, and they are the rights of individual citizens, not the rights of corporations and not the rights of governments. There is the generality - the setting aside of the rights of individuals by enacting legislation in favour of two corporations, neither of which resides in the ACT. In whose interests are we working, and why are we doing this? The Government, Madam Speaker, has not put forward a persuasive argument for this. The Bill has been put on the table and we are supposed to rubber-stamp it and support the Government without any argument whatsoever.
Mr Berry: It is a long bow, Trevor.
MR KAINE: I am not a rubber stamp. I am not a rubber stamp for Mr Berry. He can sit over there and chuckle about this. I am not Mr Berry's rubber stamp, I am not Mr Connolly's rubber stamp, and I am not the Chief Minister's rubber stamp.
Mr Lamont: Whose rubber stamp are you?
MR KAINE: I am nobody's rubber stamp, and you ought to know that by now, Mr Lamont. If you have not learnt that by now you have a long way to go. I will teach you over time. Five years from now I will still be teaching you that I am not your rubber stamp, nor anybody else's. Madam Speaker, I have dealt with the generality of clause 5. But there is an aspect of it that is not in general at all; it is quite specific.
If this Bill is passed today there will be a denial of the rights of citizens that exist today, including the rights of anybody who has a ticket in an instant lottery in relation to which proceedings have been instituted but not determined. Any ACT citizen who today owns a ticket in an instant lottery which, under the Burgin ruling, would allow them to collect
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