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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2390 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

Mr Humphries said:

No, it was long afterwards. That letter was written, as I recall, a couple of months ago.

Remember "long afterwards" is December. The comment was made in March. "The letter was written a couple of months ago", said Mr Humphries. He continued:

The statement you referred to I made in the Assembly last year. Mr Speaker, I can hardly be responsible for having made an assumption about what the Commonwealth Government was going to do last year, which has now changed in the course of this year.

I am afraid it was all in 1996. Never mind. Finally, and most tellingly, he said on 2CN - and it is in the transcript that I have tabled:

We have had discussions with the Federal Government and I'm hopeful that the legislative steps at the federal level will be taken before the end of the year to allow us to create, to issue, or rather to automatically convert all the existing leases in the ACT that are of that kind into 999-year leases.

The picture that emerges is quite clear. In the first instance, the Minister claimed to accept the paramount role of the Assembly; in the second, he conceded that his party would not be seeking to implement their preferred policy position to move all ACT leases to perpetual leasehold. Just as an aside here, I remind members of the actions, for instance, of the Chief Minister in regard to the heroin trial. Although Mrs Carnell knew that there were differences of opinion within her own party, she did not proceed to promote the trial publicly without knowing that she had the full blessing of the majority of the Assembly; it is a quite different case. Similarly, when Mr Stefaniak became Minister for Education, he very quickly abandoned his party's policy of providing free school buses, because he knew that he did not have the support of the Assembly.

Let us look at what Mr Humphries was saying in December. I will go back to my third piece of evidence. He began his response to the question about the Federal Government's move to change the Federal Land Act to 999-year leases by welcoming the move. He avoided, until asked a supplementary question, saying why the Federal Government suddenly sought to create such a change. He said:

Yes, Mr Speaker, I was aware of that letter - - -

As I said, Mr Moore interjected very tellingly, and demonstrating the clear view of the majority of Assembly members:

After you guaranteed no action.

Mr Humphries said:

No, it was long afterwards.

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