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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (21 February) . . Page.. 145 ..

Mr Kaine: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I do not think Mr Whitecross should hold the Chief Minister accountable for Mr Berry's impetuosity this morning. Frankly, I think this is ludicrous.

MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

MR WHITECROSS: Exactly. But Mr Kaine obviously feels the need to come to Mrs Carnell's rescue. The contempt with which Mrs Carnell holds this place is apparent. On the face of it, she allowed us to debate a motion for half an hour when she knew that she had already withdrawn the threat. I do not think that reflects well on Mrs Carnell. That is something that she is going to have to live with. If she had any guts, apart from apologising for all the other things in relation to her handling of this, she also ought to apologise to the house for having wasted the house's time this morning by not getting up at 10.30 when the house resumed and saying, "I note that the second item on the business paper is a motion about payroll deductions. I want to advise the house that I have withdrawn the requirement". Mrs Carnell can apologise at any time she likes for not having informed the house of that at 10.30 this morning.

Mrs Carnell: I did.

Mr De Domenico: She did, straight after Mr Berry spoke.

MR WHITECROSS: She did not. We all know that she did not. It is on the record, and Mrs Carnell has really slipped up badly by not doing that.

There is a much overused word in commentary on politics at the moment in Australia. It is "arrogant". You hear it all the time. The Liberals in particular are rather prone to using this term; they throw it around like confetti. I cannot think of anything more arrogant than Mrs Carnell's performance in relation to this matter. She made a threat for the purpose of inflaming an industrial dispute, which had no justification, which was going to cost the Government money and which was going to achieve nothing. She made the threat purely for the purpose of harassing union members and unions with whom she was in dispute, as a way of getting back at them. That is a piece of arrogance.

She then withdrew that, without ever giving this house the courtesy of informing us, as she should have, as I have just described. That in itself is a piece of arrogance. She sits there even now and says that she has done nothing wrong; that what she was doing was a perfectly reasonable thing to do - something which no-one in this house agrees with, apart from she and her colleagues. That is a piece of arrogance. She says that she was doing the CPSU a favour, when the CPSU and all of us understand that she was not doing the CPSU a favour at all. That is a piece of arrogance. She says that she was offering people a choice, when what she was doing was imposing on them a withdrawal of their payroll deductions unless they took an action themselves. It was not a choice that they had made; it was a choice that she had made to withdraw their deductions unless they made an election again. That is a piece of arrogance.

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