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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 1924 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

It is true, as Mr Moore pointed out, that we have lower costs of operating this Assembly than other parliaments in Australia.

Mr Moore: By miles.

MR HUMPHRIES: By a large margin. The argument that we could afford to build in a few protections, so-called, to prevent undesirable people from getting into this place, harassing us and so on is, I think, a rather weak argument.

Mr Kaine: The Labor Party did not think it necessary when they were in government.

MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed.

Mr Moore: It was your office that complained about it; it was your office that started the ball rolling.

MR HUMPHRIES: You were not here, Mr Moore, when I made those points a moment ago.

Mr Moore: I was listening.

MR HUMPHRIES: Then you will understand that the fact that we complained about security arrangements does not mean that the arrangements that are now in place are the best arrangements that we can have. Indeed, my party objected to the Administration and Procedure Committee about those arrangements and was comprehensively ignored.

Ms Tucker: It was not ignored.

MR HUMPHRIES: Well, you made no changes to them. We asked that the arrangement not be proceeded with in that form, and there was no change. Is that a reasonable basis on which to assume that we were ignored? I do not care what members in this place say about how much attention they paid to the Liberal Party before they decided to reject every submission it made; the reality remains that it is harder for members of this community to get access to their members, because of the security arrangements in this place. The Liberal Party makes it very clear that, if it has the numbers in the next Assembly, it will remove those security arrangements because they are inequitable and are unnecessary in a place like the ACT.

There are lots of members of parliament all over this country, probably all over the world, who operate electorate offices; and those electorate offices do not have security staff available at them. Members go to those electorate offices, sit there, talk to constituents who have come through the door and have to take their chances. Members of this place, allegedly, do things like go out and eat lunch, go to the bank to take out some money or go out and buy a present for their wives or something at lunchtime. On those occasions they have to leave the cloistered enclosure of this building and wander out somewhere amongst all those hordes of homicidal maniacs who are obviously out to get them somehow; and they have to take their chances. It seems to me that the idea of making this into Fort Knox, a little fortress, to prevent access by members of the public, does not exactly offer members of the Assembly a great deal of protection in their daily lives.

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