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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (29 November) . . Page.. 3410 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Mr Deputy Speaker, I read all of that to make sure it was not taken out of context. Some of the things mentioned, as each member can hear, applied specifically to the inquiry into Katie Bender's death, but do not precisely apply here. I am quite comfortable about conceding that. But the general thrust of what is going on in this letter is the same thing that the coroner is telling us now. The coroner has made it very, very clear to us and it has created a problem for us. He says, "No, there are real problems in conducting these two inquiries." (Extension of time granted.)

So what the coroner has put to us is: "Please do not proceed this way." I came back to members and said, "Okay, here are some alternatives as to how we might proceed." None of those have been considered in any reasonable way. It was very clear at the meeting yesterday that they thought, "We are going to have what we demanded and that is all there is to it." I am seeking to find a way through that, in a sensible way, with goodwill. I am trying to ensure that we have a proper understanding of the ramifications of what we are doing, and that we can do it in an inclusive way.

This motion does not respect that. It is, on the contrary, saying, "No. We have decided an inquiry under the Inquiries Act by Professor West is what we are going to have, and that is all there is to it. Thank you very much. We do not care what you think." That is what we have in front of us.

MR KAINE (4.25): I must say that I am quite concerned at not only the lapse of time since the original motion was passed by a majority of this Assembly, but by the tone and the nature of the debate today. If the government had responded as it should have done to the motion of 18 October, the inquiry would have been in place three weeks ago.

Yet here we are today arguing the point about whether we should have an inquiry. That is the nature of the debate today, not "Should we get on with the inquiry?", but why we should not have one. That is what we are hearing from the government, and that, I have to say, disturbs me greatly.

That motion was put forward by Mr Rugendyke on 18 October, because he and some of us in this place shared the concerns of people out there in the community who are directly facing the problems that this motion is designed to deal with. Mr Rugendyke did not think of it just by sitting at his desk. He did not think of it sitting in his office. He responded, as he is expected to do, to the interests of members of the community.

It was not only Mr Rugendyke who passed this motion. A majority of the members of this place did so, and we did so because we felt that there was some substance to the problem, and it needed to be investigated. It needed to be investigated in a specific fashion so that there could be no criticism after the event that it was engineered, that it was modified, that it was somehow influenced unduly, because it is-as the Chief Minister has pointed out to us-in the nature of a judicial inquiry.

The Chief Minister gave us a lecture about what a judicial inquiry is. I do not think any of us needed that lecture. I understand quite well, and I think everybody else in this place understands what an inquiry under the Inquiries Act is about. It is certainly not an inquiry by an Assembly committee. We know that. It is not an inquiry by a committee formed by the government from members of the community. We know that too. We know exactly what an inquiry under the Inquiries Act is and what it is intended to do.

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