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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 9 Hansard (3 September) . . Page.. 2812 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

I have to say again that, if this Assembly passes this legislation, we will certainly do our best to achieve that. We are very happy to table all the letters that we send to other States, and to New Zealand as well, in this particular circumstance. That goes without saying. We act on the will of the Assembly and we will continue to do so. But again, why would they, Mr Speaker?

So, I think what Mr Corbell has done - he knows that perfectly well - and what the Labor Party has done is bring forward a set of amendments that actually mean nothing, that by their very nature cannot actually achieve one thing. It is actually quite smart, I have to say. I am reasonably interested that they have done it; but does anybody think that this actually will make a difference? How can it, Mr Speaker? It still means, of course, that we will be acting contrary to the uniform food standards that were signed by Rosemary Follett in 1991, when Ms Follett, as Chief Minister of this Territory, agreed that the ACT would not adopt any food standard that was not in line with the Australian and New Zealand Food Standards Code.

Mr Humphries: That is right. She did.

MRS CARNELL: She signed it off, I think, on 19 August 1991. She gave the word of this Assembly, as the duly elected Chief Minister, that this Assembly would not take that approach. I have to say that I take it very seriously that this Assembly would actually go in a different direction when certainly Rosemary Follett, as the head of the Labor Party but also as the elected Chief Minister of this place, gave her word and her signature not to go down that particular path. I think, again, it is a very dangerous approach.

Ms Follett also signed the national competition policy - not something which, as the Greens seem to think, you do when you feel like it or an argument that people on this side of the house bring up when we want to say that competition is necessarily good. Rosemary Follett again signed on behalf of this Assembly, on what were very solemn occasions. I do not believe that heads of government sign their names to binding documents, such as uniform food standards or national competition policy, without a lot of thought and without meaning what they say when they sign those things.

Mr Speaker, one other comment needs to be made. What we see today is those opposite bringing forward a set of amendments for which, rightly, they have the support of the majority of the Assembly, but which by their very nature can never do anything. They can never actually achieve the ends that this Assembly supposedly wants, Mr Speaker. Those opposite do so the day after they ran with the grand new direction for the Labor Party, one that will focus on jobs. Mr Speaker, as much as those opposite have tried to say, "No jobs will be lost", even though the company involved says that that is under an extreme cloud, nobody has indicated how this could produce one job. In fact, the bottom line here is that there are 60 jobs under a cloud, according to the people who actually employ them, and not one new job will be potentially produced. Is that a great thing on which to spend almost all of the first morning under the grand new plan for the Labor Party, when jobs are the main issue, according to Mr Berry?

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