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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (6 December) . . Page.. 3780 ..

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: You have no right. I don't recognise you on the point of order. Sit down. Let the Chief Minister finish his address. Now, I will listen to you, sir. Chief Minister.

MR HUMPHRIES: Thank you, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker.

Mr Berry: You are loud today, Mr.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: You need to be sometimes, sir.

MR HUMPHRIES: It is true that jobs have been lost from Totalcare.

Mr Berry: Is he a foghorn or a leghorn?

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: You will be dealt with, sir, if I have to -

MR HUMPHRIES: I don't know what to do. There hasn't been a single sentence I've uttered without being interrupted.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sit down, Chief Minister. Mr Berry, if I have to address you again I will deal with you. Chief Minister, you have the call.

MR HUMPHRIES: Thank you, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker. It is true that jobs have been lost from Totalcare. They have been lost because Totalcare has lost contracts in competitive tenders. They have fought for work and they have lost that work. It is a matter of great regret to me that that is the case. Some of that work has been work, I understand, in the private sector; some has been work in the public sector; some has been work for the ACT government.

I don't want Totalcare to lose a single contract more - not one more if I can avoid it. Passing this motion today is a recipe for ensuring that Totalcare is ineffective in being able to make bids for work because if it wins a contract for government services or government activities, and pursuant to the motion that Mr Berry has moved today - I have asked members to read the words "no transfer of government assets, activities or services to Totalcare" - the government can't get back to the Assembly quickly enough to approve passage of a motion to allow that to take place, it might lose that contract. If members of this place want to take that risk they should pass Mr Berry's motion.

Mr Berry says that the principles underpinning this motion have been approved before by the Assembly. They have never been approved by the Assembly in this way. The Assembly has affirmed the principle before that the government should not be allowed to divest assets from public ownership without prior approval by the Assembly. This is not divestment of government assets in any sense of the word. In fact it is the transferring of assets or activities or services from one part of government to another.

If Mr Berry's conspiracy theory is accurate, if there is some nefarious plan on the part of the government being hatched in the bowels of the bureaucracy to effect a sale of Totalcare, what can the transfer of assets to Totalcare achieve? Does Mr Berry imagine that members are going to be so spooked by the fact that there are all these assets now sitting in Totalcare that they will say, "Oh, we can't possibly stop the sale of Totalcare;

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