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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 3 Hansard (26 May) . . Page.. 555 ..

MR OSBORNE: I present Scrutiny Report No. 2 of 1998 of the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety (incorporating the duties of a Scrutiny of Bills and Subordinate Legislation Committee). I ask for leave to make a brief statement on the report.

Leave granted.

MR OSBORNE: Our legal adviser has looked over most of the Bills from the last sitting, and the committee has made a comment on the Crimes (Amendment) Bill (No. 3) - I have indicated to Mr Rugendyke that there are a number of issues in there that he would need to address - and a short comment on the Crime Prevention Powers Bill, which I have taken on board, and on the Litter (Amendment) Bill, indicating that there is perhaps undue trespass on personal rights and liberties. I am sure that Mr Moore will address that issue. Comment has been made on the Water Resources Bill as well, Mr Speaker. I commend the report to the Assembly.

QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

MR STANHOPE: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Chief Minister. On ABC radio on 8 May the Chief Minister said that the Government had not referred the Belconnen pool issue to the Competition Policy Forum because the forum had decided it did not want the Government to refer matters to it. The Chief Minister also said, in relation to the Belconnen pool:

I understand that the forum has been offered a briefing on this on a number of occasions but at this stage haven't taken that up.

On 20 May the Chief Minister reaffirmed this view when she told the Assembly:

... the forum wanted to be able to investigate the things that it wanted to investigate or believed needed to be investigated, not the things that the Government wanted investigated.

I have had correspondence from three members of the forum now, in which they refute both of those statements and in which they claim them not to be true. Can the Chief Minister confirm that she was wrong about the forum's views on referral of issues and briefing, and that she has misled the people of Canberra and the Assembly?

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