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Mr Connolly: On a point of order: Let me understand this. An out-of-order question may be asked, as long as it is not answered?

MR SPEAKER: No. That is not the case. I was prepared to allow it, Mr Connolly. I would remind members, however, that standing order 117 might be read with great profit by all members, and standing order 118 might be read with great profit by Ministers.

Mr Moore: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker, on standing order 117, which you just raised. I think Mr Connolly's point was that standing order 117 - in this case, (b)(vii) - provides that questions shall not contain hypothetical matters. The point Mr Connolly was raising was that the question itself was out of order because it raised a hypothetical matter. It had nothing to do with the answer.

MR SPEAKER: I accept your comment on that. He did raise a hypothetical matter.

MRS CARNELL: I will finish very quickly.

MR SPEAKER: You are finished anyway. I do not quite know where we go from here.

Sex Industry Consultative Group

MS TUCKER: Mr Speaker, I address a question without notice to the Attorney-General, Mr Humphries, in relation to the sex industry advisory board. Mr Humphries, given that sex industry workers are the group most likely to be affected by any decisions of the sex industry advisory board but at present have no representatives on this board, will this Government act to ensure their representation on the board?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I thank Ms Tucker for her question and for giving me a little bit of notice of it. There is, in fact, as Ms Tucker indicates, at the present time no representative of workers in the sex industry on the Sex Industry Consultative Group. That has come as something of a surprise to me, I must confess, having had this matter drawn to my attention. The group was actually set up in February 1994, after the Prostitution Act was passed. We wanted to put in place a body that would supervise a series of questions to do with the management, as it were, of the prostitution industry under the new regulatory regime in the ACT. Ms Fiona Patten was originally the representative of sex workers on that body when it was set up in February 1994. She was expelled from the organisation WISE - Workers In Sex Employment - in September 1994; but it was agreed at the time, I think, by the former Government, that she would remain on the body - on the advisory group because she was the - - -

Mr Connolly: On the body?

MR HUMPHRIES: What was that?

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