Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2395 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

what he has said in this place that Mr Osborne is a highly principled man. In fact, he has very conservative beliefs, and he believes firmly in them. So where does it begin and end? You say in this place that this side of the house blocked supply when, in fact, you now have a process which says you definitely have a coalition over there.

Mr Humphries: No.

MR QUINLAN: They are part of the government. They are setting part of your agenda. They are editing it. They are in it. Your coalition, the conservative coalition of the ACT Legislative Assembly, cracked when a couple of people crossed the floor. It has now been shored up by virtue of compromise. In fact, not only has it been shored up; quite obviously, it is now more solid than ever.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I do not want to take up much more of the time of this place on this. I reiterate my opening statements. There are injecting places in this town. All this bill was meant to do was to provide at least some supervision for some of the people who will be using those places anyway and possibly save lives. All those people who originally voted for this trial spoke passionately about the saving of lives. Mr Moore spoke of saving lives in the last week or so. Yet we come to this place and we see the worst and the weakest of compromises. We see a government, with Mr Moore and Mr Osborne and Mr Rugendyke, trying somehow to shift the spotlight and say it is Labor's fault that Mrs Carnell has backflipped, it is Labor's fault that Mr Smyth has backflipped, and it is Labor's fault that Mr Moore has backflipped on a fundamental principle that they spoke so highly of before. We deny that.

MR KAINE (11.56): Mr Deputy Speaker, I make it clear up front that I do not support this amendment bill. I will be voting against it, and I will try to explain why. Everybody knows, I believe, that I am opposed to the notion of a safe injecting place, but I am more opposed, vastly more opposed, to the political machinations that take place in this place which have led to this amendment.

This amendment is nothing but an expedient to keep a government in place. Let us be clear. The sole purpose of this amendment is to keep a government in place. Mr Humphries, I think, let the cat out of the bag when he said in his speech, no budget, no government. Mr Deputy Speaker, you know, I know and everybody else in this place knows that it does not follow that if the budget is not passed today there will be no government. There may be no Carnell government. There may well be a government. It may be a Humphries government, but there will be a government. So to argue that we have to pass this amendment to postpone the implementation of an act of this place of only six months duration on the basis that there will no government if we do not do this is a subterfuge. It is not true.

Mr Deputy Speaker, my concern about all of this is that it is about keeping government, and it is about abandoning all principle on the part of certain people in that government. We have heard over many months about how we have to have this supervised injecting place because it is going save lives. That has been repeated in very recent days. But today the principle of saving lives is set aside in favour of maintaining power and authority-that is what this debate is about-and in doing that certain members of the government have set aside their principle.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .