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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (5 December) . . Page.. 3672 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
on any other party. Surprise, surprise, the Liberal Party does not pick up money from any club.
Mr Humphries: Yes, it does.
MR STANHOPE: A couple of bob from the Southern Cross Club; you are really going to miss that! If there were some intellectual strength and rigour or a lack of hypocrisy in the position you are putting, I assume that you would be writing to all the members of the 250 Club and asking them to consider making their donations to charities rather than to you. I assume that a letter will be going out to all those people on this list of contributors saying, "Before you consider making any donation to the Liberal Party in future, please consider making your donation to charity. That is what we in the Liberal Party want."
I assume that such a letter will be going out to all of the people on this list who make major contributions to you - CRI Project Management, Mr John David, Evermore Express, FAI, the Free Enterprise Foundation and the George Adams Estate. I assume that the letters will be going out and you will be asking all of them to donate to charity before they donate to you, because you are not hypocrites, are you? You are honourable, are you not, so that before any donations come to you, you will want all the donors to reconsider? We assume that that is what you want.
Mr Quinlan went to the heart of the matter in speaking of the role political parties play in the community and the extent to which political parties and members of political parties are an essential part of the community. They play a fundamental role in the community. One of the great problems with modern day society and community is the extent to which people have disengaged. The argument around the rise and rise of One Nation was the lesson of disengagement. The fact is that the community has disengaged to such a large extent from the political process. One of the explanations why we have those sorts of politics being thrust upon us and running rampant through the community is the extent to which there has been this wholesale disengagement with politics and with political parties.
This sort of approach by one group in this place is about seeking to score some political advantage over its opponents. That is what it is all about. It has nothing to do with the capacity of clubs to contribute to charities or the community. The point has been well made but needs to be made again that the Tradies Club and the Labor Club provided more than half of the donations to charity made in the last year. The Tradies Club and the Labor Club really are shining examples of community support and contribution within the community; but, of course, that does not suit the agenda of the Liberals. It does not suit their agenda that the Tradies Club and the Labor Club made 60 per cent of all donations to charity in the last year.
Mr Humphries: They have got no problems, then, have they? What is the problem?
MR STANHOPE
: That is right, but it does not suit your case. You have run this campaign for the last couple of years and you have come to this point, and what do we discover? The two clubs doing the most in the ACT are the two that you, for ideological purposes, wish to attack. The two clubs that put the lie to this campaign of denigration of
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