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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1806 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

What were the issues in 1989? Well, for the most part, it seems it was the X-rated video tax. That is how the debate started. There was also a grab bag of other issues relevant to that day. In 1991 the issues were generally based on the instability of the then Alliance Government and the various policies it was proposing. In this no-confidence motion debate the Opposition here could well raise a range of policy issues more relevant, more serious, I believe, than those debated in 1989 and 1991. In the same way, we could raise very serious administrative issues, more serious than those in the earlier debates. But the issue on this occasion is so much more serious. The bar, the standard, is so much higher, and the arguments proposed here well and truly meet that standard.

What we are looking at this time is a most serious breach - a failure to seek and to secure appropriation, a failure to act within the law. The issues in those other motions were nowhere near as serious. They were minor in comparison. Based on those two precedents, this most serious motion should be carried. The weight of the various legal opinions alone makes it clear that there was an unlawful act.

There was another successful no-confidence motion that I should refer to. On that occasion it was not directed against a Chief Minister but to the Minister for Health, Mr Berry. What was the charge on that occasion? Let me quote some words. The charge from the present Chief Minister, among other things, was that Mr Berry did not inform the Assembly. It was not anything to do with the details of the VITAB affair. That was acknowledged as not being the reason. It was that he did not come into this Assembly and inform the Assembly. Well, if it was true then, it is true today, and the Chief Minister has not informed the Assembly in relation to Bruce Stadium. Mr Moore maintained, in general terms, that Mr Berry had to go because he created the impression that everything was okay.

Mr Moore: When it was not.

MR WOOD: Well, what is the difference? I will acknowledge your interjection. What is the difference between that statement by Mr Moore then that the impression was that everything was okay and Mrs Carnell's impression that everything was also fine? So those are, I think, very pertinent points about the history of those no-confidence motions.

But there is another matter. I want to read those no-confidence motions on those two other occasions and there is a very significant difference. The first one was in December 1989. It was Mr Collaery who moved it. He said:

Eighteen months later the motion moved by Ms Follett read:

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