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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 256 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Mr Speaker, I said I would run out of time on this, but I will come back to it later. The quotes continue. Under the headline "Kate's half-way report card", the article says:

Her most vocal critic outside the Parliament, Jacqui Rees, of the Save Our City Coalition, says she has sold-out on crucial planning policy to the property profiteers. Rees commented this week that Carnell was the Liberals answer to Ros Kelly and brought about as much substance to politics.

Why is that in there? You were quite comfortable about people criticising politicians, and I accept that; so what is it doing in amongst these quotes? It was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The rest of us have said it in one way or another plenty of times. It is a bit of an insult.

I will just make a very quick comment on the AMP. My understanding is that Ms Rees is employed as a consultant to the AMP on privacy issues. It is something that, I must say, ought to have been declared; but to suggest that that gives you a major conflict of interest is a question we need to look at very carefully. We have heard a great deal of the pot calling the kettle black. The Chief Minister stands up here and says, "But Ms Rees has no proof", and then blasts us with these so-called bits of proof which are nonsense and are not proof themselves. The duplicity is not to be missed.

MR BERRY (4.35): Mr Speaker, this has been the most cowardly example of an attack on a person in the community that this Assembly has ever seen. Mrs Carnell lost the publicity debate outside this Assembly and then has crawled in here and defamed this person over and over again to try to make her point and defend herself against her embarrassment outside.

Mrs Carnell: We did not bring the debate on or ask any of the questions.

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell interjects, "It is not my debate". Mrs Carnell was the one who sacked Ms Rees. We know that from Mrs Carnell, by her refusal to deny the fact that her own office drafted the letter sacking Ms Rees. This is Mrs Carnell's idea, and it is pretty easy to pick it. Her spirited defence of her position in this place, including an unprecedented attack on an individual, demonstrates that this is Mrs Carnell's idea. Mrs Carnell cannot stand to be criticised by anybody.

Ms Rees was sacked because, among other things, she criticised the National Capital Beyond 2000 report. My understanding is that Ms Rees comments on behalf of the Save Our City group, more often than not; she was certainly not sacked because of her contribution to the Kingston Foreshore Development Authority. As I understand it, there has been no reflection on her performance on the authority. One example where Ms Rees demonstrated that she fully understood the issues of conflict was when she declared her relationship to the Science Festival and did not vote when Kate Carnell demanded that $40,000 of the Kingston Foreshore Development Authority's budget be moved from the authority to the Science Festival. She was quite capable of understanding what conflict of interest was about, and she made clear that it did not affect her operation

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