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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (5 September) . . Page.. 3186 ..

MR SPEAKER: I call Mr Humphries.

Mr Moore: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder whether you are aware that, since Mr Humphries actually moved the motion, he will be closing the debate. Normally, we give other people an opportunity to have a say.

MR SPEAKER: Mr Humphries is a generous person. He is quite happy to allow Mr Whitecross to speak. Is that correct?

Mr Humphries: Absolutely, Mr Speaker.

Mr Berry: Mr Speaker, you have never tested that.

MR SPEAKER: Yes, but you do not have the call, Mr Berry. Mr Whitecross has the call.

MR WHITECROSS (Leader of the Opposition) (4.40): Mr Humphries is trying to bring on this afternoon a Bill which he introduced only this morning, and he has abandoned the Executive business paper in order to do that. It is interesting to note that we were not afforded the normal courtesy of advance notice through the daily program.

Mr Humphries: I told you that it was going to happen.

MR WHITECROSS: Yes, you did, in the chamber when you introduced the Bill, but you did not prior to that.

Mr Humphries: I did yesterday.

MR WHITECROSS: It was a different version. The original legislation was introduced on 20 June and rammed through this parliament in the wee small hours of 28 June - only a week later - in order to satisfy an obsession of Mr Humphries and his parliamentary colleagues with closing supermarkets early, against the wishes of their customers. Now they have found that their legislation was inadequate, and here they are again introducing a Bill in the morning and trying to ram it through on the same day, hoping that there is not another mistake in it which we will find out about next week. In fact, such is their state of panic over this that they are inventing whole new precedents about how legislation commences in order to cover up their last-minute mad scramble panic about their handling of this legislation.

There is no excuse for this. If the Government had taken the advice of the Opposition and the Independents in the first place and allowed the Planning and Environment Committee to look at this matter before they passed the legislation, then we would not be in this state now. We would have had a more considered piece of legislation. For all their trumpeting about consultation, they are happy to introduce a piece of legislation that the

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