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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (7 September) . . Page.. 3095 ..

Mr Stanhope: Give me your legal opinion on 29(1)(b)(ii).

MR SPEAKER: Order! I do not want a cross-chamber debate.

MR HUMPHRIES: I will give Mr Stanhope a legal opinion on the use of the word "child". "Child" means a person under the age of 18.

Mr Stanhope: No, just give me an opinion on 29(1)(b)(ii).

MR HUMPHRIES: I know that you want to move off that issue about the child quickly and onto some other issue, but you said that the girl guides could be subject to this provision and you knew-at least you know now-that that was not possible because the provision does not apply to a child under the age of 18. You have not had the goodness to come into this place and admit that fact. You are always talking about people being Gary-ed. You should be prepared to come into this place and admit not just to this place but to the ABC listeners of yesterday morning that you made a serious error.

Mr Speaker, I want to contrast what Mr Stanhope has said tonight in this debate with what he has said previously. He has said tonight, "The Attorney and I have crossed swords," and "I would be grateful to hear the Attorney's explanation of that," and "I am much reassured to hear the Attorney make these statements." He made those statements in the Assembly today, but yesterday he was making statements such as: "I am concerned too that the Attorney continues to mislead the public about the breadth of this bill," and "The Attorney obviously has not looked at clause 8 or, if he has looked at clause 8, he is deliberately misleading the people of Canberra about the scope of this legislation," et cetera, et cetera in that tone.

Yesterday on television he was saying, "The Attorney does not understand his own legislation on the issue of indictable offences." Tonight, across the floor of this chamber, I explained to Mr Stanhope his error in that matter, an error which incidentally was explained previously to his advisers in briefings by my department-

Mr Stanhope: There's a Gary.

MR HUMPHRIES: I am sorry, it was. If you do not believe me, Mr Stanhope, get the officer concerned to come along and talk to you and see what she says. He says tonight on the floor of the chamber that he is grateful to be enlightened, but yesterday it was not a question of: "We could be at odds about this, so I need to find out more." It was: "The Attorney is wrong. The Attorney has not done his research. The Attorney is mistaken. The Attorney is misleading the public."

The Attorney has read the legislation. The Attorney knows that it does not apply to girl guides. It does apply to indictable offences and a simple reading by a competent lawyer would disclose the same facts. What Mr Stanhope has done in this debate has been to egregiously mislead the public with scare tactics and he does not have the decency to come into this place and say, "I might have been wrong about that girl guide bit. I might just have been wrong about that."

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