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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 11 Hansard (13 December) . . Page.. 2954 ..

MR BERRY: The issue is forcing her to take notice of the motions of this Assembly. She has been censured because of her refusal to accept motions of this Assembly and the position of this Assembly in the past. She has been censured, in fact, because she burnt Mr Osborne, and I think she has to be held to her word and she has to be forced to reinstate these important health services.

I know that Mr Moore and Mr Osborne have some sort of ideological investment in this Government, but I do not know for how long they are prepared to tiptoe through the rubble they are leaving behind them. We must ensure that this adjournment motion is debated in order that the community can be aware of the position of the Independents in relation to this matter. It is no good saying that you support a particular motion in this Assembly unless you follow through on it. The motion that is on the notice paper today was agreed to yesterday by the Administration and Procedure Committee.

Mr Humphries: No; it was agreed that it should be put on the agenda.

MR BERRY: It was agreed to be put on the agenda and it therefore ought to be debated. In that way we can demonstrate where people are coming from. Mrs Carnell does not want it to be debated, because she knows that it is going to put the pressure on her even more and show her up for what she really is. It is going to show her up for giving certain undertakings and not following them through. What has not been said here is that Mrs Carnell and her Government signed up a sweetener agreement with the salaried medical officers this week. Do you remember the extra $5,000 incentive to take redundancy payments? That deal was done this week, after you had been censured for getting rid of the doctors.

If the Independents are going to tolerate that sort of action it just goes to show you how far they will follow this Government. They will follow them to hell. We cannot allow the Government to get away with it. That is why it is so important that this motion be debated. If the Independents want to vote it down, let them have the courage to vote it down and go with the Government; but they should not keep putting it off in order that Mrs Carnell can practise her crash or crash through program and thumb her nose at this Assembly.

MR MOORE (11.32): Mr Speaker, the reason I moved the motion to adjourn the debate had nothing to do with the concept Mr Berry put forward that I just do not care - I just do not care about this and I do not care about the other thing. Over the nearly seven years I have spent in this house I have demonstrated exactly the opposite. I do care about health issues and I do care about education. Unlike the point Mr Berry put, the area I do not care about is whether he goes into government or not. Through each of these speeches from Mr Berry is the driving thought: "Threaten the Government, threaten the Government", the implication being that if we threaten the Government he might wind up being a Minister again. He is just going to have to wait, because it is not his turn. If he waits long enough, Mr Speaker, he might even be Chief Minister.

The real issue here is that Mr Osborne, in his speech prior to my adjourning this debate last time, made it very clear that he was not prepared to support this motion yet, that he was going to give the Government time to deliver on these issues. Perhaps that had to do with an assurance from the Government; I do not remember why it was that he decided

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