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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2440 ..

MR CORBELL: Mr Speaker, the Government deliberately put this motion up to waste the time of the Assembly and to play tit-for-tat politics in this Assembly. That is the only reason they did it. It is quite clear why they are backing away from this motion now. You either have the strength of your convictions or you do not. Clearly, you do not. Clearly, you do not believe that Ms McRae and Mr Berry did something wrong. If you agree now that your whole censure motion was a waste of time, we are quite happy to agree with that, Mr Humphries; but we want to hold you to your convictions. You either have a conviction or you do not. You are an embarrassment. You have wasted the time of this Assembly. You should just put up with having to deal with the censure motion. Let us get it over and done with and let us get on with question time.

MR SPEAKER: I do wish that we could get this out of the way.

MR MOORE (5.25): Mr Speaker, I think it is great. Now we can get on with question time and with the business of the house.

MS TUCKER (5.25): I also support letting this thing go and getting on to question time; but I want to make one comment. If all that was needed was an apology, I wish that we had gone that way to begin with. I was not going to be able to support the censure motion anyway, because I have seen just as much happening from this side of the house that could be regarded as abuse of privilege. There are mechanisms within this place to deal with that. I am concerned that the Government wanted to put up a censure motion at all.

Question resolved in the affirmative, with the concurrence of an absolute majority.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister) (5.26): Mr Speaker, I withdraw the motion, on the basis that Mr Berry withdrew the word "defrauded".

Acton Peninsula - Demolition of Buildings - Inquiries

MR MOORE: My question is to Mrs Carnell. In order to have you understand the seriousness of the question, I will need to read from a letter, a copy of which I have received today. The letter is to Major General Smethurst of the board of inquiry. It reads:

Dear Sir,

I will not mince words. I believe the integrity of your Inquiry has been breached.

Let me explain. On 20/8/97 I made a brief submission to your Inquiry. I received an acknowledgment yesterday afternoon. There is no stamp on the envelope.

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