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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 5 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 1284 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Corbell made some comments about the number of censure motions. Since we are in the mood for saying that people mislead things, Mr Corbell, I am sure unintentionally, misled the listeners of the ABC this morning when he was interviewed about this - it may have been yesterday - and said this is the tenth censure motion or no-confidence motion we have faced since the Carnell Government came into office. It is actually the eleventh. The fact is that we have had a large number of these motions. They have become increasingly frequent. I think, Mr Speaker, it suits some members of this house to move such motions because apparently it proves that they are doing their job. I do not think that is the case.

I want to make a point about the effect of censure motions in the broader community. The first censure motion that was moved, to the best of my recollection, of the Carnell Government was in November 1995. There was a headline on the front page of the Canberra Times that read "Censure ploy: Carnell on a rocky road" and it reported with considerable coverage the details of the censure motion. By the time the Third Assembly had finished sitting, the significance, or the prominence, given to reporting of censure motions had declined considerably. The second last motion got a much smaller article on page 3 of the Canberra Times. They have been getting smaller ever since, in my perception. This says something about the way in which censure motions have been overused, indeed abused, in this place in the last few years. The currency is being debased. Members need to ask themselves whether what is happening today is going to further debase that currency.

Mr Speaker, it is a little hard to respond to this motion because, quite frankly, the case put by members of the Opposition in particular - in fact, all members who have spoken in favour of this motion - has been quite confusing. Mr Stanhope rose in what I thought was one of the more lamentable speeches that we have been given in this place in the last six months or so and told us that he accepted that people can make a confusion between leases and blocks. He seemed to discard altogether the argument that there should be a censure on the basis of confusion of those two terms. But then he went on to base his claim not on deliberately misleading but recklessly misleading on the information which should have come to us from members of the Public Service.

Mr Quinlan took a slightly different tack. He restated the concept of deliberately misleading and said that, although we had no proof or evidence that the Ministers actually knew that the proponent came with only one lease rather than three - however, he had no evidence of that - it is logical that the Ministers must have known and, therefore, the censure motion should get up on that basis.

Ms Tucker had a different line of argument altogether. Her concept of censure revolved around the fact that she was not in favour of rural residential; the Government was. It had pressed ahead to establish rural residential in the ACT and, therefore, we were deserving of censure on that basis.

Mr Speaker, it is hard to respond to members, given that there have been so many different planks, sometimes contradictory planks, in this debate. There is a fundamental question: Did we deliberately, according to this argument, or recklessly, mislead the Assembly? Some have said one, some have said the other and some have said both.

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