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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3807 ..

MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, could I please beg your protection from that big bully?

MR SPEAKER: If you stick to the matter before the house you will receive it.

MR HARGREAVES: Thank you. I am trying my best to do that, Mr Speaker, but Mr Osborne is ceaseless in his interjections. He is just making a bigger fool of himself. If he would only be quiet he might learn something for once in his silly life. What I was about to say, Mr Speaker, is that I happen to agree with some of the things that Mr Osborne said this morning.

Mr Osborne: Oh, I will be quiet.

MR HARGREAVES: Right. How about you just shut up for a second and listen? Mr Speaker, the committee voiced its concern about the extent to which it gets ignored when it puts forward significant concerns about legislation that is put forward. Mr Kaine put it quite well this morning. If there is a recurrent theme running through the reports coming out of the scrutiny of Bills committee it is that it is pointing out things such as inappropriate taxation through subordinate legislation. We keep saying, "These are our concerns. Will you do something about it?", and the same things keep coming up. The extent to which reports on specific issues or legislation which has been presented are either ignored or just rebutted without any reasonable explanation is incredible.

With respect to the issue before us this morning, I have to urge caution. We have had concern expressed by the legal adviser. This legal adviser does not have a barrow to push. He does not put his own particular spin on anything. He just says, "This is the difficulty with the law as I see it". We did discuss this matter in our committee today and we did say that there is sufficient concern to say, "Stop for a second". Now, let us be absolutely fair about this. Often in this place the scrutiny of Bills committee has put forward a report and we have been asked to debate the matter before the government response has been put forward, and we on this side of the chamber have complained about that. What we are seeing here is an offer from the Minister for Health to get his officers working furiously and to come up with a government response. So, whilst I am urging caution on the part of those people who want to push the Bill forward to listen to that response, I also urge caution on the part of those people who are going to receive the government response.

It seems to me that people are pulling and pushing in both directions and getting absolutely nowhere. What this Assembly ought to be doing is saying, "Thank you very much for working so hard, Mr Moore, but if we do not agree with what you provide to us in 24 hours, well, that's your bad luck and we will not be proceeding with it". We are not saying, "Let's pass this legislation on Thursday". We are saying, "Let's debate it". If Mr Moore comes up with unsubstantiated responses, then bad luck. What we cannot have is anybody saying that the process is flawed.

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