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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 5045 ..

MS TUCKER (10.58): As a new member too, obviously I have had a very steep learning curve in this place. In the election campaign in 1995 there was always something new to learn at the various community meetings. I think the first time I became aware of one of the local politicians was through my daughter when, on polling day, she was handing out how-to-vote cards. Being a teenager and it was a long day, she kept wandering in front of this picture behind her which was saying, "Vote for me". The person whose picture it was was Deputy Chief Minister here at one point and he was getting really annoyed about my daughter standing in front of the poster. He kept coming up and saying, "You are standing in front of my picture; will you move?". She would move, but she kept wandering back. Finally, he came up and said, "If you don't move, when I'm in government I'm going to cut down all the trees", which was really interesting. When I was elected and my daughter was looking at the television showing all the people who were successfully elected, she said, "Who is that?". I heard that story.

Mr Osborne: Who was it?

MS TUCKER: It was De Domenico. Then, when we got into this place, we were told by Mr Cornwell, the Speaker, that we could expect to not have interjections only in our first speech. After that we would be able to look forward to that, and that has been the case. I think Mr Berry or someone else was saying that some of us were sensitive to conflict. I wonder whether he was implying it was us. I was not quite sure about that. We have had that debate a couple of times in this place and I can assure members that I am not sensitive at all to the interjections, and neither is Ms Horodny anymore. They are often tedious and we tend to ignore them. I am sorry but I have to say something serious here. I do think it is unnecessary a lot of the time.

Mr Moore: But it is fun.

MS TUCKER: Mr Moore thinks it is fun. Yes, sometimes it is; mostly it is boring. There are interesting sorts of protocols that we had to learn quickly. For example, during the memorable first Carnell budget we learnt it is apparently okay to get drunk in the lobby but not okay to eat chocolate in the chamber. Also, on that night we learnt how to put up a censure motion. I can remember putting up a censure motion which I wrote by hand and just dropped in front of Mrs Carnell and Rosemary Follett at the time, suggesting that we should censure Mr Moore for wearing such a terrible tie and that it was causing me great distress.

Mrs Carnell: I thought that was fair.

MS TUCKER: Yes. I could see I would have got Mrs Carnell's support for that.

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