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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 11 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 2858 ..

MS FOLLETT: Thank you. I want to speak about the matter of Mr Keith Lyon, Mr Speaker, and I will speak a third, fourth or umpteenth time if it is going to keep causing brawls between the Liberals. We are enjoying it enormously.

MR SPEAKER: Relevance, Ms Follett.

MS FOLLETT: Mr Speaker, Mr Keith Lyon is still a permanent public servant and I believe he is a deputy secretary at Veterans' Affairs. The fact is that he was not appointed to a chief executive position by the first ACT Government - he was not - and those, Mr Speaker, are the only positions to which the Government appoints. We did not appoint him, nor did we sack him, as Mr Humphries asserted. Mr Lyon was then, and remains, a public servant. He was not sacked and his career most certainly was not terminated. If members opposite understood the first thing about their own legislation they would see that that is a very important point indeed. The fact of the matter is they neither know nor care about our public service at all. That is what we are seeing coming through in this legislation - - -

Mr Humphries: Mr Speaker, I take a point of order. To talk about what we do not know or do not care about goes well beyond any standing order.

MR SPEAKER: I uphold the point.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General): I seek leave, under standing order 47, to further explain my position, Mr Speaker. When the ACT was granted self-government it did not have its own public service. It inherited a public service - - -

Mr Connolly: Mr Speaker, this is a fatuous point of order. The phrase that someone "neither knows nor cares" is common in debate. Mr Humphries persists in interrupting the Leader of the Opposition as she speaks and he is now attempting to debate the merits of the case. He still seems to think the Leader of the Opposition is making a statement under standing order 47; whereas, as you have clearly ruled in response to the fatuous debate - - -

MR HUMPHRIES: No; I am making a statement under standing order 47.

Mr Connolly: Not in the middle of her speech, you do not. You wait until the break. Mr Speaker, can you control these fatuous points of order from the other side which are clearly delaying this debate?

MR SPEAKER: The question of who is delaying the debate, I think, is in itself debatable.

MR HUMPHRIES: Under standing order 47, Mr Speaker, I seek leave to make an explanation.

Mr Berry: No, you cannot interrupt debate.

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