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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2381 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: If you were present at the negotiations, Mr Kaine, I look forward to you explaining what it was or detailing what it was that was said in those negotiations. I did not speak to Mr Rugendyke until Monday afternoon.

Mr Kaine: Yes, that is you.

MR HUMPHRIES: That is right; or anybody else, as far as I am aware.

Mr Kaine: You should get your act together. You should know what is going on, shouldn't you?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Kaine has enormous knowledge of these matters, Mr Speaker. I look forward to him explaining how negotiations were proceeding and when agreements were reached between the government and the Independents. I suspect that he has little he can actually put on the table of a substantive nature on that matter, Mr Speaker. I do know that the government was faced with the choice of a call from the opposition to resign; not to negotiate on this, that or the other budget document, but to resign.

Ms Carnell: And then what would have happened?

MR HUMPHRIES: And then they would have taken office and somehow they would have passed the budget. The question on my lips is: how? How were you going to pass this budget that we could not pass? What were you going to do? They were going to split the two appropriations, Mr Speaker. They were going to split the two appropriations into appropriation-

Mr Quinlan: That would have been a good idea.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I have to seek again your intervention and assistance for me to be able to complete my remarks.

MR SPEAKER: Yes, and I want all members to come back to the bill, please. We have a bill before us called the Supervised Injecting Place Trial Amendment Bill 2000.

Mr Quinlan: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Humphries is talking about divided appropriation bills at this point in time.

MR SPEAKER: I am hoping that Mr Humphries will come back to this bill. I can see where he is heading.

MR HUMPHRIES: If you want to rule, Mr Speaker, that we cannot talk about that, I am happy to obey that ruling; but you will have to keep it for the rest of the debate. Speaking to the point of order, I would argue that the two matters are intimately bound together and cannot be separated. It is impossible to speak about one without speaking about the other.

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