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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 5 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 1380 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

Is that the next stage of development? The Chief Minister says they are all private members, so they are all going to use their ministerial resources to develop their own personal agendas and put them forward in this place as private members business. The private members of this place might as well close up shop and go home, because we do not have available to us the resources that these five people have to generate this sort of - - -

Mr Moore: You have more resources to do it than I had to do this.

MR KAINE: Mr Moore knows full well that there is one member of this place, a crossbencher, who is at a disadvantage compared to everybody else, and one might ask why that is so. I notice the Chief Minister reacting. Why is that so? It is very curious. It might be suggested, of course, that that is a little stroke of malice, might it not? The Chief Minister stood up and said that Mr Moore is not a member of the Government. Can anybody in this place or anybody anywhere else believe that? Mr Moore sits over there. He is a member of the Cabinet. He goes to Cabinet Ministers meetings around Australia and represents himself as a Minister in the ACT Government. If he is not there in that capacity, in what capacity is he there? If he is not speaking for the Government, for whom is he speaking? For himself? Maybe that is the truth.

If that is the case, we have a most amazing experiment in government. We have a Cabinet Minister who is not a Cabinet Minister, except when he chooses to be and when the Chief Minister chooses for him to be. The rest of the time he is some sort of hybrid between a Minister and a private member. I suggest that this hybrid better sit down with the rest of the Assembly and figure out quite where he fits in the place because - - -

Mr Moore: I am happy. It is just you who are uncomfortable, and the conservatives over there.

MR KAINE: But you talk about consultation. You have never mentioned to me your intention to be a private member as well as a Minister. You have never expressed your intention to me of producing your own private members business agenda for the rest of the year. All I can say, Mr Speaker, is that Disney would have been proud of us.

MR MOORE (Minister for Health and Community Care) (4.14): Mr Speaker, in responding to the comments that have been made, it is quite clear that I have hit a raw nerve and one would - - -

Mr Kaine: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: We have all had to seek leave to speak.

MR SPEAKER: No, it was part of the motion, Mr Kaine.

MR MOORE: Because of the churlishness of the conservatives on that side of the Assembly we were required to move a suspension of standing orders. You were given leave out of good grace. Good grace was not forthcoming for me or the Chief Minister. I realise that it was not you. It was Mr Berry. Mr Speaker, I clearly touched a raw nerve,

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