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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (6 May) . . Page.. 1451 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Mr Speaker, you have to know the history of the relationship between Mr Humphries and Mr Collaery to get a better understanding of these matters. Mr Speaker, there was the Alliance Government of which Mr Collaery and Mr Humphries were a part and in which they were contestants. I need not go into the conflicts between those two Ministers in the course of the Alliance Government; suffice it to say that they were at loggerheads for most of the period of the Alliance Government. As an example of that, I have just been handed a clipping from the Canberra Times of 18 April 1991, headed "Amazed Humphries Blasts Collaery". It reads:

I need not refer any more to that. I take you to the point when the Alliance Government disintegrated as a result of the sacking of Mr Collaery by the then Chief Minister. We all recall that it was Mr Humphries' staff that removed the personal effects of Mr Collaery from Mr Collaery's office when he was sacked.

Mr Moore: Are you sure about this? You'd better not mislead the Assembly.

MR BERRY: I have checked and I am told that that is true. I am told that it is true that his personal effects were moved from his office after he was sacked. If it is not true, it does not make any difference to the case.

Mr Humphries: It is absolutely untrue, Mr Speaker, and I ask for him to withdraw that claim. That amounts to an allegation of theft or something. I want him to make clear that that is not true.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Various allegations have been made. Most of them have been couched in qualified terms. I am willing to accept those qualifications for the debate.

MR BERRY: I accept that you say that they are not true, but that has been around for years. I do not want to have to go and get statutory declarations to that effect, either, but it needs to be said that there was a bitter relationship between these two men and that it was ongoing. I do not think that there can be any dispute about that - a bitter relationship that was ongoing. This harboured bitterness has ended up in drawing this matter again into public focus.

Mr Speaker, I think that the Attorney-General has allowed his judgment to be impaired by this long and bitter relationship. In fact, there is no better evidence of that than the complaint which was put to the Law Society by Mr Humphries at a crucial time in relation to matters which are being considered.

As has been drawn to the attention of this place, four months after the alleged events the Attorney-General found some very thin reasons, in my view, to attack Mr Collaery. I have no brief for Mr Collaery. As has been said in this place, I have had some unkind things to say about him. But there is no excuse for anybody attacking his professional

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