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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 268 ..

Mrs Carnell: I did not apologise. Michael, you were sitting in my office. I explained what that was about. You are misleading. You were sitting in my office and I explained exactly what had happened.

MR MOORE: This is a very interesting debate today, Mr Speaker. Mrs Carnell said, "You sat in my office and I explained what that was about". Yes, that was about what the letter was about. I know what it was about. I knew what it was about before Mrs Carnell explained it. It was about a legal situation.

Mrs Carnell: Yes.

MR MOORE: That was how it was dealt with.

Mrs Carnell: I explained to you exactly what I was apologising for, didn't I?

MR MOORE: Indeed. Mr Speaker, there is one thing that is very interesting about this debate. It is a very unusual debate anyway, in terms of being about an individual like this in our community. On a number of occasions members are talking about what happened in private conversations. One of the reasons why this Assembly works in a council style, Mr Speaker, and one of the reasons why we get along and get our job done and manage to negotiate, is that we have private conversations.

Mrs Carnell: Yes, but you have to. You cannot then - - -

MR MOORE: I must say that a number of them that I have had would be very useful for me to use in the chamber today.

Mrs Carnell: I agree.

MR MOORE: Indeed. I have no intention of using them. I was horrified earlier today to hear some of those private conversations used in debate. I think that parliamentary privilege has been abused, here in this way, and it started on Tuesday. I think there has been a misuse of parliamentary privilege. I happen to think that parliamentary privilege is a very important right that a member earns when he or she comes into this Assembly, and we all use it particularly carefully. I have used parliamentary privilege. I misused it on one occasion, for which I apologised, back in the First Assembly. Mr Speaker, I think that to make an apology and then come in here and launch this kind of attack is an abuse of the system. It leads us, really, to question the ethical position associated with this. I still do not understand what it is that has made this Government, starting with Mr De Domenico, so vindictive about this particular person, other than that they are feeling particularly vulnerable when somebody criticises them.

Mr Speaker, my original intention in coming into this debate was to say that this debate is not about Jacqui Rees individually. This debate, as Ms Tucker put it, is about community and a community member feeling comfortable about serving the Government. Unfortunately, because of the way the debate is run, in some ways we have no choice but to deal with the particular individual who, as has been pointed out, is a consultant to the AMP on Federal privacy law. That is what the consultancy is about. We have talked a great deal about an individual, but what has happened is that a whole range of

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