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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (2 September) . . Page.. 1748 ..

MR OSBORNE: Anyway, as I said, I thank members for their support on this issue of me having the right to discuss and debate the matter.

MR BERRY (11.37), in reply: Mrs Carnell has probably clarified this, but I think Mr Humphries needs to address a statement that he made in the Assembly in relation to a 1994 debate. He said that the Liberals opposed moves to force me to bring on a certain Bill. I am referring to page 3903 of Hansard which demonstrates - - -

Ms Carnell: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think I clarified that in my speech.

MR BERRY: No, that is up to Mr Humphries. He is the one who made the statement, Mr Speaker. If he turns to page 3907 of Hansard he will see that all the Liberals, including Mrs Carnell, attempted to force me to bring on a Bill - - -

Ms Carnell: And, Mr Speaker, I made it clear that I think it was a mistake.

MR BERRY: Mr Humphries has to clarify his position. The reason why they were attempting to force me to bring on the Bill was that it could be defeated because they knew that I did not have the numbers. Mrs Carnell's intention was to see that Bill defeated. That issue is quite clear. The circumstances were quite different from the circumstances today. I am not trying to force Mr Osborne not to bring on his Bill or to do anything with his Bill. As I pointed out earlier, I am merely conveying to this Assembly the repeated requests from the assembled opponents of the legislation out in the square yesterday. The most often-repeated request was: "Withdraw the Bill". I heard Ms Tucker say that she had indicated that she would support this approach but will not do so now on the basis of her concern about the democratic processes being interfered with in some way or another. Well, her enthusiasm yesterday was quite emphatic. So too was Mr Moore's enthusiasm. They were quite emphatic for this approach and I am disappointed that they have changed their minds. But they have changed their minds for the wrong reasons.

This is not about forcing Paul Osborne to do anything with his Bill. This is about a community request being passed on to Paul Osborne. Paul Osborne need not heed it, but he has to understand that there is an implication from that that the community will notice.

Mr Moore said I said something about Mr Osborne holding this place in contempt. It appears, Mr Moore, that you have forgotten that Mr Osborne rose in the course of my speech and wrongly used the standing orders to say that he would not agree with it. That is what I thought was holding this place in contempt. Without even listening to the debate he was telling us no before anybody else had spoken. So, Mr Speaker, those are a couple of issues.

I will go back to another point that was raised in the course of debate. Some references were made to me and to Mr Stanhope in relation to the debate of last week in which we raised the issue of the deal we thought existed or that we thought we had exposed between the Government and Mr Osborne to bring on this legislation.

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