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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3365 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Mr Moore may have been able to have secret meetings with the Government in order to rush this Bill through. I was perfectly happy to wait until the Government responded, so that I could consider their response against the recommendations of the committee and the legislation; but I will not stand here and be berated by someone so arrogant as Mr Moore is in relation to this matter and take it quietly. It was a piece of spiteful vitriol which does not enhance debating in this place. The fact of the matter is that members in this place - and there are not many of them - are entitled to have read this report against the background of a Government response before proceeding with the Bill. If the Government and Mr Moore and others have decided to proceed with it, that is up to them; but they are setting some new standards which may revisit them one day, which they might not like.

Clauses negatived.

Clause 22 negatived.

Remainder of Bill, by leave, taken as a whole, and agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

Motion (by Mrs Carnell) proposed:

That the Assembly do now adjourn.

MR OSBORNE (6.29): Mr Speaker, I would like to say a few words about Mother Teresa, who passed away a couple of weeks ago. Gandhi always professed a great respect for the person of Jesus Christ, but was less impressed with many of his followers. He once said that if Christians lived according to their faith there would be no more Hindus left in India. Unfortunately, most of us fail to meet the demands of our beliefs. If there had been more Christians like Mother Teresa, Gandhi's comment may have been realised.

I suppose that it says something about our age - and I am not quite sure what - but in recent weeks two internationally renowned women have died, and the responses to their deaths have been quite different. One woman was young and beautiful, a princess by marriage and a celebrity by dint of royalty. She was, by all accounts, a decent and kind woman who had a feeling for the poor and used her celebrity status to raise money for worthy causes. No-one could say that Princess Diana did not deserve recognition for the work she did or deny her the great outpouring of love she received in death. But her encounters with the poor themselves were fleeting, and she lived out her life surrounded by luxury. Despite this, her death stopped the world and, as she was a young woman, made many consider their mortality.

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