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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 1 Hansard (29 April) . . Page.. 183 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

Mr Speaker, that is a principled position. The difficulty that the Labor Party has is with comparing that with the position of, I would argue, the Government and, certainly, Independent members. What basis do they use to guide their decision-making in relation to privatisation? Mr Speaker, they are not prepared to place on the public record unequivocally the sorts of criteria they will use for the assessment of whether any sort of entity should be privatised, corporatised or outsourced.

Mr Speaker, the Labor Party has no qualms whatsoever about making public the sorts of criteria it would use. I think that it would be interesting to test whether the other people in this place have a similar principled position when it comes to presenting clear, defined and public criteria on what processes and what issues should be addressed whenever the matter of privatisation, corporatisation or outsourcing occurs.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General, Minister for Justice and Community Safety and Minister Assisting the Treasurer) (5.04): Mr Speaker, I can indicate that I am quite comfortable with accepting the amendment. My party does not have any such criteria; so you have got everything you are going to get from us. Our criteria, very simply, are, if you like, about the question of public benefit or otherwise for the citizens of the ACT. So, you have got everything. I did not come in here and skite about having a document which I was not prepared to place on the public record; so, I am not particularly embarrassed by that point of view. Mr Speaker, having obtained this very secret document that was being secreted by the - - -

Mr Berry: My Speaker, I take a point of order on relevance. Mr Speaker, the debate is not about our document. Yesterday we went through this process in terms of a point of order raised by Mr Humphries in relation to an explanation that I was making. The fact of the matter is that this debate is about whether the parties and members in this place come forth with their particular criteria, not about the contents of the criteria. We can have that debate later when we have them all; it would be much fairer then.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, this is, of course, a debate about criteria for privatisation. That is what the motion refers to. In fact, it is about having parties table those documents.

Mr Berry: No. I take a point of order, Mr Speaker.

MR HUMPHRIES: If I can finish my point of order, Mr Berry - - -

MR SPEAKER: Order!

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, clearly it is within the terms of this motion, and I am simply referring to the very documents that this motion is calling on parties to table. I am referring to those documents.

MR SPEAKER: I uphold your point of order.

Mr Berry: Mr Speaker, Mr Humphries did not raise a point of order; I did.

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