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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 2 Hansard (28 February) . . Page.. 426 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I heard Mr Berry in silence and I would ask that the same courtesy be extended to me.

I listened very carefully to Mr Berry's arguments about this matter. Let me make one comment first of all. Mr Berry's remarks were full of accusation that the government had been laden with dogma, that it was taking an ideological position in opposition to nurses and to unions, that this is all about the government's philosophical bent.

The fact is that the government-the ministers and I, in particular, as Chief Minister-took no role in the decision to reject the nurses' request for an advertising slot on the pay slips. It was a decision made, as is appropriate, by the head of the administration, Mr Tonkin, and it was a decision which reflected, I think, the terms of the guidelines which apply to advertising in ACT government publications.

I do not think Mr Berry ended up tabling the documents he was referring to, so I will instead do so. I would like to table the guidelines in a moment. But I would just draw members' attention to what the guidelines say. These guidelines are publicly available on the government's website. Under the heading "Conditions applicable to non government advertising in ACT Government Publications", the first guidelines reads:

• Government policies, programs or activities;

It then goes on to mention things like the Financial Management Act, equal opportunity legislation and anti-discrimination legislation. The third guideline reads:

Mr Speaker, I do not have a copy with me of what the nurses propose to include. I only saw what they propose to include when I received a letter, I think yesterday or a day or two ago, from the nurses federation, asking me to intervene in this matter. As I recall, the words included a reference to the nurses campaign. It was not particularly explicit but I took that to mean the campaign that they are running against the department of health for better pay and conditions.

Mr Speaker, I would have thought it is reasonable to argue that a body which wants to seek support in a government publication for their campaign against the government might be said to be in conflict with the condition-a condition which has been in place for some time; it was not invented by us for this situation-which says that there should be no conflict with government policies, programs or activities.

We would not be the only organisation in this country that includes the condition that people not use their advertising as a platform to attack the organisation which is providing the vehicle for the advertisement. This is not really too much to ask. Let me switch the situation around and ask those opposite to consider the alternative. Supposing we were in opposition and you were in government-as you will be from October, I have heard you tell us-and in November we came forward and said, "We're going to put a Liberal Party ad on the bottom of a government pay slip."

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