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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 4819 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

Mr Speaker, do people usually ask for money to put forward a true account of an incident? Why would they require anonymity if they had nothing to hide? It also seems that they did not think to check with the police to see whether the story matched other eyewitness accounts, or even whether other eyewitnesses had provided a statement to the police.

But, most curious of all, it seems that they accepted without question the claim that both I and the car carrying these witnesses were travelling at 120 kilometres an hour when the accident happened. Mr Speaker, it must mean that the people involved were speeding as well. Mr Speaker, I count myself pretty lucky to have walked away from the accident, but I doubt whether I could have walked away from an accident of this nature if I had been travelling at 120 kilometres an hour. I also suspect that the air bag might have been activated if I had been travelling at 120 kilometres an hour, and it was not. Mr Speaker, the interesting thing about this is that I understand that another eyewitness contacted Capital television last night before they put the story to air and gave a very different account. The claim simply does not add up. For Mr Berry to perpetuate these bogus claims simply indicates that he has even fewer ethics than the television station that paid for the story.

Mr Berry: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I heard an imputation that I had no ethics. Would you ask that that be withdrawn.

MRS CARNELL: Actually, Mr Speaker, I did not say that. I said that Mr Berry had fewer ethics than the television station that ran the story. That could be anything.

MR SPEAKER: True.

Mr Berry: Mr Speaker - - -

MR SPEAKER: You did not say whether that was good, bad or indifferent.

Mr Berry: Mr Speaker, a new low standard has been set.

MR SPEAKER: No, I do not think so, Mr Berry.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I am happy to withdraw if there was any imputation.

MR SPEAKER: Thank you. Let us get on with some business.

MR OSBORNE: My question is to the Chief Minister, Kate Carnell. Chief Minister, I would like to draw your attention to an article from the Sun-Herald. I will quote just a couple of paragraphs from the article Chief Minister. It starts out by saying:

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