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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1362 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

the worse it got. At least Mr Humphries was able to lead and try to put a straight face on the Government's view, having been caught out by the unexpected support from the Greens, probably because they did not understand the ideological position that the Greens were coming from. Ms Horodny has just put it, and Ms Tucker was too embarrassed to be here while she put it.

What happened in the last few months? It is very simple, Mr Speaker. It is about polling and is exactly the same as with Howard and Hanson. Here we have Humphries and Horodny. Howard looks at the polling for Hanson and thinks, "Oh, dear, this is going to actually hit coalition votes; we had better change our policy on this and start actually taking some action". In this case the Liberals locally do their polling on shopping hours and find that the vast majority of people - and Mr Humphries is trying to say it is 60 per cent, but we know that those figures are out; that it is much greater than that - whether they go shopping every night, late at night or once a week or even once a fortnight, want to have that choice, their individual choice.

They do not want to be told by the Greens, "You will wear sandals and you will walk down to your local shop", or, "You will ride your bicycle down to your local shop, and that is where you will do your shopping; and you will bring it back in a basket". They do not want to be told that; they want to have their own choice. Sometimes, Mr Speaker, I do take my dilly bag, get on my bike and go to my local shops.

Ms Horodny: You do not have a local shop; yours has been closed down.

MR MOORE: When I make that choice, it is my choice. Ms Horodny chuckles and says, "Your local shop has closed down". Ms Horodny is not correct about that, because I have a local shop. My local shop is at Campbell, and that is where I go generally for my local shopping. If I want to do my bigger supermarket shopping, I make a choice and go to Supabarn, as a rule. But just last weekend I made a choice and went over to Woolies at Dickson. Even though it is a multinational store, I still shop there. I was very happy about shopping there. In fact, it is a very unusual thing for me to do, but that is what I did because I made a choice to do it. What the Greens' ideological position does not seem to recognise is that, even though they have a good idea of what they think is best for the environment and what they think is best for people, people themselves prefer to have their choice.

Unfortunately, the Greens got caught out because, basically, what happened was, as I explained, the Government never thought this legislation would get up. Well, it did. Now, as we get closer to an election, they realise it is absolutely disastrous and they are going to have to back off, leaving the Greens high and dry the only time that they went into coalition with the Government effectively on any substantive issue. The only time they coalesced with the Government on any substantive issue they picked a loser, which shows the naivety there.

Mr Speaker, the reality is that the stupidity behind this was with the Liberals and the Government. That was where the real stupidity was. I have had a bit of a game by having a go at the Greens this morning, and it has been fun; but the reality was that the stupid decision was made by the Government. A naive decision was made by the Greens.

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