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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2402 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

You can tell your side of the story. You can rewrite the history. That's okay. But you are on the record as voting against the health line of the budget which contained the safe injecting place. You voted against it and your colleagues did, and you gave the crossbenchers the base to do what finally occurred. It could not have happened without the Australian Labor Party. When you had the chance to show leadership, you shuffled away from it into the night. You hide it. You say, "Oh, we wanted to block the budget."

Mr Stanhope: I never shuffle.

MR SMYTH: But you knew what would happen and you took that risk. Mr Speaker, it is sad that we are here today to recommit a budget. Twenty-five years ago there was no amount of angst across this country about a Liberal government that blocked a Labor budget. The Labor Party has made great gains from it for 25 years. It has become a mantra for them. But we had this shuffling, this movement away, this shifting, equivocation and prevarication that is the hallmark of Jon Stanhope's leadership, and therefore he allowed the safe injecting place to be halted. No amount of retelling of the story today, no recasting of it for history, will change that. The votes are there on the record. When push came to shove, the ACT branch of the Labor Party, under the shuffling leadership of Jon Stanhope, shuffled off into the night and abandoned the safe injecting place.

An opportunity to make amends for that occurred on Monday morning last when Mr Stanhope met with the Chief Minister, but Mr Stanhope did not have the courage or the support of his party room to cut a deal. He is a leader without a base. He is a leader without support. He is the man who shuffled away from the safe injecting place on the morning of 30th June this year and has caused us all to be here today. They can recast it, they can retell the story, we can have histrionics, and we can have the theatre of the Assembly, but what we did not have on the night when it counted was the support of the Labor Party for the safe injecting place. They can attack the Chief Minister, they can attack me personally, they can say whatever they want-the report on the recording of the budget is there. They voted against it on the day that it mattered.

MR MOORE (Minister for Health and Community Care) (12.27): Mr Speaker, I think this is an extraordinarily sad day. It is certainly an extraordinarily difficult day for me. I think the thing that makes it saddest is that people have been prepared to play games with this important policy issue. The blocking of the budget was clearly a game which has resulted in this legislation coming forward. If this legislation does not go through today, if we do proceed with a supervised injecting room now, will it change the game? Or will the man who speaks with two tongues, Mr Stanhope, come back here and begin the same games in a series of different ways? Whether it be with no-confidence motions or whatever, it would clearly be the case that the same situation-

Mr Berry: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: are you going to allow that? "Speaks with two tongues". We can all play that game.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

Mr Berry: I mean, what irony.

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