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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 10 Hansard (12 October) . . Page.. 2934 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

Minister was aware of the problem; yet he failed to act. He misled the community on the extent of the contamination and he misled the community on the extent of the Government's response. That is an unacceptable situation and he certainly deserves to be censured for it.

MR SPEAKER: Mr Kaine has an amendment and I think it would be useful to allow it to be moved, and then we can have a more general debate.

MR KAINE (11.16): Thank you, Mr Speaker. First of all, I would like to indicate that I do not support the motion in its present form. I do not believe that either Ms Tucker or Mr Corbell has actually made out a case against the Minister for Urban Services that would justify a censure. I think we need to be careful in debates such as this that we do not become tools for the trade unions. If the trade union had a concern about what was happening there, its proper course of action, surely, was to go to management and have the matter dealt with. The Minister says that that is what did happen. If the trade union went outside the normal - - -

Mr Berry: That is an abrogation of his responsibilities.

Mr Stanhope: A complete abrogation.

Mr Moore: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. The interjections are still continuing.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Kaine has the floor.

MR KAINE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will not be put off by the interjections. If the trade union chose, for political reasons, to go outside the normal processes of resolving such an issue, you have to ask why they did so. Were they attempting to create a situation where they could confront the Government on this issue? What did they hope to achieve by it? Mr Corbell is ably putting the position of the trade union; perhaps he would like to tell us why the trade union did not go to management. He is asserting that there was no negotiation with the Government. If the people working on the job notice a potential problem, their responsibility is to go to management and have that issue addressed, not to go to the trade union and have the trade union attack everybody concerned outside the system.

Mr Corbell: They did go to management and management ignored them.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Corbell, stop interjecting.

MR KAINE: I told you, Mr Speaker, that I was not going to be put off by interjections. Mr Corbell had his chance and he did not make his case. The point is that he failed to make his case. He had an opportunity to blacken the Minister and he failed to do so. I was not persuaded by Ms Tucker's attack on the Minister, either. I am merely saying that, having heard both sides of the argument, I am not prepared to support a censure motion.

Mr Speaker, I have circulated an amendment to the motion of censure. It will still require the Minister to meet some of the wishes of Ms Tucker. It will require the Minister to table in this place a report that deals with proposals to improve the environmental

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