Page 4480 - Week 14 - Thursday, 1 December 1994
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MADAM SPEAKER: Order! The Chief Minister has the floor. Continue, if you wish, Ms Follett.
Ms Follett: Could I clarify the situation, Madam Speaker? Mr Moore has sought leave for a particular course of action.
MADAM SPEAKER: Yes, I believe that leave has been granted.
Ms Follett: Leave has not been granted.
MADAM SPEAKER: Leave has not been granted. All right.
Mr Moore: Madam Speaker, after the Chief Minister has spoken I will move an amendment that way.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (5.02): Madam Speaker, Mr Moore's entire case, and indeed the only issue he has raised in moving the motion of want of confidence against Mr Connolly, is that Mr Connolly's pronouncements were, in Mr Moore's opinion, at odds with a press release issued by the AIDS Action Council of the ACT. Mr Moore read out the media statement on which he based his case. I listened very carefully because I had not seen that statement before. At no stage in the reading of that media statement did I hear any reference to the amendment to the Drugs of Dependence Act that was passed yesterday. It was always, in my mind, fairly questionable whether that statement was directly related to the legislation passed in this Assembly. The statement, from memory, said that the use of cannabis would benefit some people suffering from some classes of illness, including HIV/AIDS. I have no doubt that there are any number of medical practitioners, and probably patients, who share that view; but at no point in that press release did the AIDS Action Council refer to the legislation that was passed yesterday. At no stage did they say that the legislation that was passed yesterday would provide the benefit which they were supporting. At no stage was that connection made. I think that was always fairly doubtful ground for Mr Moore to be running on, Madam Speaker.
That ground has been totally refuted now by the letter which Mr Connolly has tabled from Mr Matthew Gillett, dated 1 December 1994. I believe that that letter does clarify the AIDS Action Council's position, and it reinforces the fact that there was not the intention in that press release to link the benefits of cannabis in the treatment of some illnesses with the legislation that was passed yesterday. In other words, Madam Speaker, Mr Connolly's comments were not misleading. There is no other possible complexion that can be put on the case that has been put by Mr Moore, the refutation of it put by Mr Connolly, and now by Mr Gillett. There is simply no other complexion that can be put on that matter.
Mr Humphries raised the matter of Mr Connolly's comments about whether this legislation represented an open slather approach or whether it did not. I consider, Madam Speaker, that the legal advice that Mr Connolly has provided is sufficiently broad in its terms and represents a sufficiently open situation in relation to this legislation that the use of the vernacular term "open slather" is not unreasonable. It could not be judged
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