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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (4 November) . . Page.. 3579 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

now and what I like to refer to as the "blackmail" funding - maybe it should be called "bribe" funding - of the Federal Government. Mr Speaker, there is a series of issues here. We have known in self-government - and it applies to the States as well as to the Territories - that the Federal Government uses this technique in order to get its own way. What it reflects more than anything is the imbalance in our taxation systems, whereby the Federal Government can use money in this sort of bribing way: "Either you do it our way or you miss out on the money". We are talking about large sums of money.

Mr Speaker, because this has been a concern and the issue has been raised and it has been on my mind for some time, I foreshadow to the Assembly that I shall be introducing tomorrow the Administration (Interstate Agreements) Bill 1997, which is about negotiations for interstate agreements, which will require Ministers to notify all members of negotiations and to consult with the appropriate committee of the Assembly where the committee actually has a reference which bears directly on the negotiations.

Of course, there are some difficulties with this, because there needs to be a procedure for that kind of notification; but also there will be very regular occasions for these sorts of agreements where there are fairly urgent or extraordinary negotiations. The legislation will allow for those. I will talk on it in more detail tomorrow. Mr Speaker, it is also appropriate for us to make exemptions, and I will talk about the exemptions when I introduce the legislation tomorrow. What I am trying to do by introducing this legislation is exactly the same thing as Mr Osborne is trying to do - that is, to say that, when negotiations are occurring, this Assembly should be involved in the initial instance, to understand what is going on, so that we are involved in the process, instead of being tacked onto the end of the process when legislation is dropped on the table.

It is not just this Government; it happened under the Labor Government. So, it is quite extraordinary for Wayne Berry to stand here and point the finger at the Greens and say, "The Greens supported this Government. Now they can stand up and be critical". Mr Berry, it was a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedle-even-dumber - and now much-dumber - as to which way we should go. It would not have mattered which way we went, because we still would have dealt with this issue in exactly the same way as it had been dealt with before 1995. In this debate, 1995 is a quite key issue, Mr Speaker. I notice that Mr Berry was quoting Ms Follett when she was speaking in 1995, after she came into opposition. Do not forget that apocryphal quote from Mr Gary Humphries: "I can be honest now that I am in opposition". I think it might well apply in this situation.

Ms McRae: That was Mr Humphries, not Ms Follett.

MR MOORE: Ms McRae, you must have misheard me. I was very clear in saying that it was Mr Humphries who made that quote.

Ms McRae: I am just interjecting for the record that it was not Ms Follett.

MR MOORE: Your interjection was unnecessary. When you see the transcript, you will see that I attributed that quote to Mr Humphries. How could we miss it? We all know that Mr Humphries made it; we keep raising it again and again; and no doubt we will continue raising it as long as Mr Humphries is in this Assembly.

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