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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (5 November) . . Page.. 3619 ..

MR BERRY (Leader of the Opposition): I seek leave to make a short statement to follow up.

Leave granted.

MR BERRY: Again you have misinterpreted what I said. I was drawing attention to the spiteful amendment that you have moved and to the reasons why you have moved it. You have moved this amendment because you were upset at being pilloried over poor performance on the drug issue in the ACT. I am not sorry that I did it to your Government. Your performance has been particularly bad on the heroin trial. If you want to be spiteful, personal and vindictive, you go for your life; but I urge other members not to support that view. You should not try to draw parallels between my policies and John Howard's. There is no similarity. I have never said no to drugs, but I am not opposed to people saying no to drugs.

Mrs Carnell: You have said that prohibition has worked and it is all about deterring people from using drugs.

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell says I said that prohibition has worked. I have said in the past that prohibition has worked for overwhelming numbers of people. It does not work for everybody and you need other policies to deal with it. That is why I supported a heroin trial, if it were to happen. It has been taken away, and I say that one of the reasons for that was your poor management of it. Including me with John Howard is just a joke. If you want to make a joke out of the rest of the Assembly, support the amendments.

MR MOORE: I seek leave to speak to the amendments.

Leave granted.

MR MOORE: I would like to comment very quickly on Mr Berry's assessment of Mrs Carnell and how she dealt with the issue. It seems to me that if Mrs Carnell were to walk across Lake Burley Griffin tomorrow Wayne Berry would be out there saying, "See, she cannot swim".

Question put:

That the amendments (Mrs Carnell's) be agreed to.

The Assembly voted -

	AYES, 11	 		NOES, 6

Mrs Carnell	Mrs Littlewood		Mr Berry
Mr Cornwell	Mr Moore		Mr Corbell
Mr Hird		Mr Osborne		Ms McRae
Ms Horodny	Mr Stefaniak		Ms Reilly
Mr Humphries	Ms Tucker		Mr Whitecross
Mr Kaine				Mr Wood

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