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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 3753 ..

Mrs Carnell: You just said we were spending too much on health, Michael.

MR MOORE: No, that is not correct. What I said was about the way you said you would be able to manage the health budget and what you have found to be the case now. At no stage have I said that you are spending too much money on health. I am saying that you said you could manage it in a certain way. You have not been able to do it. All I said was that you should at least concede that that is the case.

I think the most serious of the allegations is the allegation of misleading the Assembly. The Assembly cannot possibly work if Ministers are prepared to mislead it about what goes on in their portfolios or on other issues. I listened very carefully to Ms Tucker's indications of why she thought it had been misled, and I think it is worth quoting the way I heard Ms Tucker say something. She said, "I am sure Mrs Carnell has been clever about not overstepping the mark". That probably answers Ms Tucker's own question as to why this motion could not be supported in terms of misleading the Assembly. If Mrs Carnell has been clever in not overstepping the mark, then she has not overstepped the mark; she has not misled the Assembly.

I understand the frustration Ms Tucker feels when she asks a question and the general answer she gets is not specific to the question she asked. We see that all the time, but to a certain extent I have to say that that is politics. What all of us tend to do is answer from what we know. We tend to avoid the questions we do not know about, although we hear, in a quite refreshing way sometimes, people say, "I just do not know anything about that".

Mr Osborne: Speak for yourself.

MR MOORE: Mr Osborne is the exception, of course. We often hear him say, "I do not know anything about that". I know I should be careful about saying such things when he is going to speak after me.

When we are talking about politics, it is not so simple that we can say, "That is politics and that is finished". For everything that somebody does in a political way, they in turn have to answer to the people at the next election. Apart from the issue of misleading, the issues I see before me today - the issue of mismanagement, the issue of promising that you could handle the health budget and then not being able to handle it in the way you believed you could, and the failure to set appropriate priorities in the community - are fundamental to the differences between different elements in this Assembly and where they set their priorities, and for that Mrs Carnell does not have to answer in terms of whether she resigns her ministry or not. What she has to do is be able to justify that to the people of Canberra at election time, and that is why I believe she will answer.

The only issue, therefore, coming out of this motion where she really has to answer to the Assembly is the question of misleading.

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