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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2378 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

passed our budget. Mr Speaker, why should we have trusted a party which was telling us in the media, publicly, day after day that the government should resign to resolve this problem, notwithstanding what Mr Connolly had to say about the same situation back in 1995? Yet now you expect us to believe that you would have supported the budget. "Oh, yes, we were going to support your budget. No worries, yes." What changed, may I ask, between 12.30 on Friday morning and 11 o'clock the following Monday morning? What changed?

MR SPEAKER: Order! Back to the bill, please.

Mr Kaine: You did a deal; that is what changed, minister.

MR HUMPHRIES: Sorry, Mr Kaine, we did no deal.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Back to the bill, please. I would remind members that later this day there will be a motion seeking to rescind a vote of the Assembly concerning the Appropriation Bill. Some of the debate should be left to that point.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, the fact remains, it is inescapable, that the people opposite-I include Ms Tucker in this because I gather that she also had a change of heart at some point over the weekend-decided that they had made a mistake by blocking the budget in the early hours of Friday morning; they decided that they had made a mistake.

Mr Berry: No.

MR HUMPHRIES: So there was some sort of miraculous conversion, was there, some sort of vision from heaven that told you that you should go back and pass the budget that you told us again and again on Thursday and Friday was no good and should not be supported? Was there a vision from heaven? Is that what caused you to change your mind? The fact is that you changed your mind. You realised that you had made a mistake and you came back on Monday morning-in fact, more like Monday afternoon-and decided that you were going to support the budget, and then you accuse us of being inconsistent.

Mr Speaker, if you can convince them to go out into the public arena and explain why it is that they changed their position, good luck to them, but I do not think anybody in this community would be convinced. Plenty of people have made comment on this issue in the last little while, including Mr Malcolm Mackerras from the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Mr Hargreaves: The guru himself.

MR HUMPHRIES: You have been happy to quote him in the past. Apparently, today he is not good enough to quote; is that the problem?

Mr Hargreaves: I have not quoted him before. Do not Gary me.

MR HUMPHRIES: No, you have not, but your party has, Mr Hargreaves.

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