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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 239 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Mr Speaker, it seems to me that this response does not deal with any of these issues. I do not mind how you respond to them, Mr Humphries. If you were serious, you would have given us a decent response. But, of course, what we have here is a response of a government that went to an election with this great idea that it would say, "We will let the community appear before the Assembly, and this will be part of our open government policy". It is the same as saying, "We will make sure that we allow people to criticise the Government", and then kicking them off boards. The Government says, "We will have a lovely open government policy, so we have come up with this great idea". But they never believed in it. They were very pleased, of course, that the Administration and Procedure Committee knocked it back. We can see it by reading this response. They did not attempt to argue about the issues at all. They have just said, "Oh, no; we really wanted to do it, because we really believed in it". What nonsense! You know that it was a silly idea in the first place. At least you can say to your constituents that you attempted to deliver on open government in this aspect. There are a lot of other things on which your promise of open government looks very shallow.

MR BERRY (3.38): Mr Speaker, it is always easy for opportunists to create an impression that something is wrong and then manufacture a false solution. That is exactly what the Liberals did before the last election. They worked very hard to create the impression that this Assembly was not listening to the community, and then all of a sudden they came up with a magic solution, which was to allow people to address this place directly. Mr Speaker, that was a massive publicity stunt, and the wiser people in the community understood that. It was one of those "bright spark" ideas that come out of an election campaign committee. It ought to be dumped immediately, because it does not have any relevance to proper consultation in the community. It just shows how shallow the Liberals' understanding of the community needs is.

It was a typical Gary Humphries proposal - real smart-alec stuff. It did not take into account the processes that were already available and that work for this Assembly. Indeed, they set up a straw man, knowing full well that it was going to get flattened. Then they screamed about it being flattened, with these false cries of pain and suffering that the Liberals are going through because this favourite vote-grabbing promise that they made in the last election has been found to be fraudulent. There is no other way to describe it. It is just fraudulent. Mr Speaker, nobody is fooled by this nonsense. Nobody is fooled by the false cries of the Liberal Party over it being smacked down, because that is exactly what needed to happen. There are plenty of processes within this Assembly. This Assembly, which has only 17 members, provides pretty open access to anybody who wants to see members or who wants to take part in the committee process - more so than most other parliaments in this country; in fact, probably more so than all other parliaments in this country.

The Liberals set out deliberately to create the impression that there was no access to the Assembly or its decision-making processes. It was a phoney claim and a phoney campaign from the outset. It does not do your party proud to be involved in these phoney arrangements and then to come in here and bleat that this magnificent promise - I say that with tongue in cheek - has been flattened by more sensible people in the Assembly. This political, vote-grabbing approach by the Liberals has been exposed for what it is, Mr Speaker. The Liberals ought to just cop it on the chin and not

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