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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 8 Hansard (26 October) . . Page.. 2132 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Apparently Ms Tucker and her colleagues were thinking about the motion last night, because they spoke to Mr Moore about it. Apparently they did not tell anybody else in the chamber about it until a few minutes ago. At first they intended that we have an MPI debate on the matter before the motion was moved. That would have allowed some debate on the matter. But now an attempt is being made to change the Government's policy in these areas. I think it is a grossly unreasonable attempt to have these issues debated in a proper forum. They are extremely important issues. We should not be dealing with them in the last couple of hours of the Assembly's work at the end of a sitting fortnight. It should have been a matter we all had notice about.

Mr Connolly: It is your fault. You moved a silly motion giving unlimited time.

MR HUMPHRIES: It still would not have come up before now. It was going to come up after the MPI, Mr Connolly. Mr Speaker, presumably, we would not have had any more notice of this matter if we had not called on the other matter this morning. We are now asked to debate this extensive matter at this hour. Mr Speaker, I submit to members that it is not time critical to deal with this matter today. There are a number of processes of discussion and negotiation going on at the moment with the trade union movement. There are still issues outstanding in that respect. We should consider the issues in a proper context and at a proper time, not in the context of a debate this afternoon. There are other important issues we have to talk about before we can conclude debate on issues this afternoon.

I know that we can argue the case that governments are elected to govern. The notice paper contains a great many motions to pull back components of the Government's budget to do with health centres, wages and conditions, enterprise bargaining negotiations and a whole series of issues. There is also an amendment that would take out a $1m increase in gaming tax. You would think, Mr Speaker, that we were a government which had not achieved the largest vote of any party that has contested an election since self-government. You would think that we had no mandate at all to put some issues forward in our budget and have them passed by the Assembly.

Mr Connolly: You are the same as we were last time. You are short of a majority.

MR HUMPHRIES: We did not amend one jot of your budget. We did not amend one single dollar amount in your budget, and we would ask for the same courtesy in respect of ours.

Mr Berry: We have not moved to amend anything.

MR HUMPHRIES: Motions that have been moved on previous occasions and supported by the Opposition have had the effect of changing the Government's bottom line very dramatically. For example, stopping the sale of health centres caused a $2m hole in this Government's budget. If you had guts, you would move to amend the Appropriation Bill in the context of the budget debate, not try to do it in this surreptitious fashion today.

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