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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (16 February) . . Page.. 156 ..
MR HUMPHRIES: I will repeat the words that I have just said, Mr Speaker; that is, that you will not find a media statement made by the Labor Party condemning their Federal colleagues.
Mr Moore: Their Federal leader.
MR HUMPHRIES: Their Federal leader and their Federal parliamentary colleagues. You will not find one. The invitation stands for Mr Stanhope to prove otherwise.
MS TUCKER (11.34): The Greens also are concerned about the process that occurred with CHOGM and also believe that it appears to be an indication of the Prime Minister's lack of affection or respect for Canberra as the national capital. We think that Canberra would have been a fine venue if accommodation and facility issues were handled with imagination, but we think that the Prime Minister is a bit challenged by imagination in any form.
We see this city as being positioned in the landscape, rather than astride it. It would have offered the world an image of Australia which is innovative and yet unpretentious. However, the situation we have been left with means that we will not see this opportunity realised. The motion and the various amendments to it are making the point quite clearly that we would like to see the issue addressed. I am prepared to support most of Mrs Carnell's amendment, but I would not support the first part of it, paragraph (a), because I am concerned about the environmental implications of that aspect of the amendment and would not be prepared to get behind it at this point; otherwise, the amendment seems reasonable.
Mr Quinlan's amendment to Mrs Carnell's proposed amendment seems reasonable as well. I was at a CPA meeting in New Zealand a couple of years ago when there was discussion about how big the event had become and whether the members of the executives group or something like that should be accompanied by their spouses and who should pay for the visit to the conference. That is an issue for healthy debate. It can happen within these organisations; so I do not have any problem with Mr Quinlan's amendment. I think that it is quite useful. It seems as though the situation got a bit out of hand in Durban although, as I understand it, there were particular circumstances there relating to security and there were a lot more people there than normally would be the case. That is my understanding of why the numbers were so huge in Durban. I do not know whether that was properly taken into account in the assessment that was later made of Canberra and the decision to change the situation.
It is a great shame that we are not having CHOGM here. It would have been a good opportunity for Canberra. It would have been an opportunity for the Prime Minister to show support for Canberra and to show how Australians are innovative and could have done it really well if the commitment had been there.
MS CARNELL
(Chief Minister) (11.37): I wish to speak briefly to Mr Quinlan's amendment. Mr Quinlan is asking the Federal Government, I understand, to work to limit the size of future CHOGMs. I would have to say that I think that that would be a very silly proposition for this Assembly to put forward as it would be argued that obviously we do not know what we are talking about. The reason the CHOGMs have
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