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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 11 Hansard (26 September) . . Page.. 3436 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

She has done that, and I think that is entirely appropriate. If you had been attacked in the same way, you would be rising and saying the same sorts of things.

Ms Tucker: You do not need to attack personally. Mrs Carnell does not like people personally attacking, but she personally attacked as well.

MR HUMPHRIES: She was personally attacked. She was personally attacked by Mr Berry. Perhaps I should tell Ms Tucker about the history of these sorts of things. This is not the first time this has happened in this way. There has been throughout the time Mrs Carnell has been in this Assembly, particularly since she became Leader of the Opposition, a consistent campaign by the Labor Party generally, and particularly by Mr Berry, against Mrs Carnell.

Mr Berry: On conflict of interest.

MR HUMPHRIES: Not just about conflict of interest; about any bit of dirt Mr Berry could get his hands on. He claimed that Mrs Carnell was profiting from the methadone program. Mrs Carnell has always been a strong supporter of the methadone program and I think, in fact, ended up having one client of her pharmacy who was on the methadone program - one person, a person from whom she made no money but whom she supplied with methadone in circumstances in which many pharmacists would not choose to do so. Mrs Carnell believes in the methadone program because she believes it is important for the purpose of assisting people who are dependent on drugs, not because she makes money from it.

You would have been here, Ms Tucker, to hear the question that Ms McRae asked last year, which was designed, very slyly, I might point out, to suggest that Mrs Carnell sold shonky goods in her pharmacy, that she sold a shonky wheelchair to somebody in her pharmacy. That was not a point of public information; that was not finding out about the safety of consumer products. That was another sly, low, unbecoming, grubby attack on the Chief Minister. It is a personal campaign about the Chief Minister and her credibility, and I think members of this Assembly should emphatically reject that approach. By all means, let us talk about conflicts of interest. By all means, let us not pretend - - -

Mr Berry: Do you remember Stan Aliprandi? Do you remember Charles Wright? Do you remember them? You drove them out of town.

MR HUMPHRIES: That is not a conflict of interest situation. Charles Wright is not a conflict of interest situation. This is. This motion is about conflict of interest, and that is what we should be talking about in the context of this motion.

Mr Berry, in the last Assembly, moved a motion that said that nobody should be allowed to have an interest outside the Assembly, nobody should be able to hold down a part-time job, members should not be able to have a profile in a community organisation that could be viewed as some involvement outside their work as a member of the Assembly. I think he even made reference in the speech he made on that occasion to people like Mrs Carnell and to the proposed election of one Mr Osborne, who at that stage was a high-profile footballer. Members are not allowed to have that sort of interest when they are also members of the Assembly.

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