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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2386 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
What we have here is a proposal that will for once, and I think for all time, allow us to trial something that may save a single human life. I put such value on that human life that I will overcome my fears and vote for this Bill tonight because I believe that it is the right thing to do. Mr Speaker, this is an opportunity for this city, yet again, to show leadership to the nation, show compassion to those who deserve it and show hope to those in great need. It is for those reasons that I will vote for this legislation this evening.
That was very well put, Mr Smyth. It is a pity that you did not mean it. What has changed between 9 December 1999 and now to make Mr Smyth give up the value he places on human life? Why is he now voting, in cabinet solidarity on what was a conscience issue, to postpone a trial that may save a single human life? What was it that made Mr Smyth actually lose the courage that he expressed he had found in December last year? What has changed is that the Liberal Party now has its revolutionaries, the Chief Minister and the Minister for Urban Services, back under control.
I suspect that the whole Liberal membership of the Assembly, with their allies on the crossbench, then set to work to undermine their other staunch ally, the Minister for Health and Community Care, the great law reformer, Michael Moore. Mr Moore, who could not wait to get the supervised injecting place trial up and running, is now proposing to vote that its commencement be postponed until after the next election.
The progressive drug law reformer who was in a race with New South Wales and Victoria to ensure that Canberra had Australia's first approved drug injection place has decided to hang onto his ministerial post and to abandon drug law reform. Perhaps he did that when he wrote to Mrs Carnell on 28 April 1998, accepting his ministerial post. Perhaps that was the end for drug law reform zeal.
In that letter to Mrs Carnell in April 1998 when he accepted his post, Mr Moore pointed to a range of issues that he recognised "it is appropriate for me to step aside from cabinet when the issues before cabinet are ones that I have identified beforehand as issues where I might have a difference of approach". Mr Moore went on to list 40 issues on which he may have to step aside from cabinet. Heading the list, and none of us were surprised to see it heading the list, is reform of drug laws. Reform of drug laws was at the head of the list, but now we see that Mr Moore is bound by cabinet solidarity on matters that come within his portfolio.
Mr Berry: Which order of principle is that one?
MR STANHOPE: Order of principle 5(2)(b)(x), I would think. In other words, in the context of his letter of acceptance of a ministerial post, Mr Moore is not bound by cabinet solidarity on this issue. He has explicitly advised that this is an issue on which he will not be bound, on which he will exercise his conscience, on which he will maintain his position of principle. Drug law reform heads the list of matters on which Mr Moore said he will not be bound by cabinet solidarity: he will maintain his position of principle and he will maintain his position of conscience on drug law reform and will not be bound by Liberal Party or cabinet positions of solidarity on those issues.
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