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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (6 May) . . Page.. 1464 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

We then had another debate which was also interesting, the debate on the victims of crime legislation. There have been concerns about that in the broader community. It is interesting that it was retrospective. I know this Government always argues that retrospectivity is able to be applied in money Bills but, once again, we are looking at the big picture here. We are looking at this Government. They definitely are a party to the whole inquest on the implosion. You do have to wonder why as politicians it did not occur to them that that might not look good, Mr Speaker. It just might not look good that there was going to be retrospective legislation which would change their liability and the taxpayers' liability for compensation.

Then we have the issue of the complaint to the Law Society. That is of interest to the community once again because of the timing, because of the person that the complaint was about and because of who made that complaint. The history of individuals in this place and their relationship with each other, I do not believe, is particularly relevant, although it does keep coming up. I think what you see, if you are just looking at this impartially, is a series of events which starts to make you wonder, especially if you already are not terribly confident about what this Government is doing.

We had raised also in the debate today whether there was a possibility that an officer from Mr Humphries' office did go to the Bender family's home. There is obviously conflicting evidence about that. I have great respect for the person involved. This is in no way about denigrating her in any way. I will just look at the issue here. It was possibly naive, if this person was identified as a person from Gary Humphries' office. Maybe it was just a mistake. Maybe it did not happen. I do not want to make a judgment on that, because I do not think I have to. What I would say is that in the debate Mr Humphries, when he was discussing that particular issue, said that it would not have mattered anyway if advice was given to this family about where they should get legal advice.

I have been listening to the debate, and up to that point I was interested either way. Yes, I was listening to the arguments, but when I heard Mr Humphries say that, Mr Speaker, I thought, "That is just not acceptable". How the Attorney-General can say it is fine for him to tell the Bender family where to get legal advice when his Government is a party to the proceedings is absolutely outrageous.

The example he gave was that it was like a doctor telling someone where to get specialist medical attention. No, I am sorry, it is not like that at all. The only vague similarity I could see would be if you had two doctors. One doctor says to a patient, "You need major surgery. I am a surgeon. I want you to have it". The patient says, "I want a second opinion". So the first doctor says, "Okay, go to this person". That would not be okay, by the way, either, because what that means is that there is a vested interest, possibly, in that first surgeon saying, "Go to this surgeon to find out whether or not you need surgery". Obviously, if you want a second opinion, you do not go to someone who has any kind of interest. But that is really not the point. It is not about doctors anyway. It was a totally spurious example. What we have here is an Attorney-General of a government who is a party to a proceedings - - -

Mr Moore: He was not a party to the proceedings.

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