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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (5 December) . . Page.. 3706 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

This proposal now requires the Kaleen sports club, when I go there to meet constituents, to notionally charge me for the room. Is that what this means? When I go to the Kaleen sports club to meet some of my pensioner constituents, the club says to me, "That is fine, Jon. You can have a meeting room free of charge to meet your constituents." Do I now say, "No, you cannot do that"? Do I say, "You have to charge me notionally for the room"? Do I say, "Not only that, but you have to donate to a charity the amount that you should be charging me for this room"?

Is that what this amendment means? Can somebody explain it to me? When I go to the Kaleen sports club to meet with pensioner constituents, does it mean that the Kaleen sports club can no longer provide a room and facilities to me free of charge, as it has been inclined to? Does it mean that the club must donate an amount to a charity? Is that what we have descended to? Is that what this means? Is this the nonsense we have perpetrated here as part of a design to attack the Labor Party? Is this how farcical and how mad this desire to punish the Labor Party is? Is this the depth to which we have descended.

We do not know what we are doing. There is nobody here to explain what these proposals mean. Is any support provided to any political party of any sort to be notionally costed and the amount of the cost sent off to a charity? This does not attack just the Labor Party. That is the trouble with this unthinking, unprincipled attack on the Labor Party for base political purposes.

Mr Humphries: You are paranoid, Jon.

MR STANHOPE: We are not paranoid. We know what you are doing. So will the entire Canberra community. They are not stupid. We have one set of rules for all clubs in the ACT except for the Labor Club.

Mr Moore: You just gave the Kaleen club as an example.

MR STANHOPE: In a practical sense, we all know - and you know, you great lumbering hypocrite. Go back and take some more dough from the Australian Hotels Association. Go back and take another fistful of dollars, you great hypocrite.

Mr Humphries: Mr Speaker, there are assertions there which are clearly unparliamentary and should be withdrawn.

MR SPEAKER: Yes. Withdraw those, Mr Stanhope, please. I would ask the government to stop interjecting.

MR STANHOPE: What - that he is lumbering or that he is a hypocrite?

MR SPEAKER: Just withdraw the suggestions you made.

MR STANHOPE: I will withdraw whatever is unparliamentary.

Mr Moore: And any imputation.

MR SPEAKER: Mr Moore, you will stop interjecting, please.

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