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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (3 May) . . Page.. 1493 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

her annotation on it. Ms Follett was advised to table a copy of that annotated memo. She did not do so.

Mr Speaker, the public service can produce that memo again to the now leader of the Labor Party, Mr Stanhope, if Labor persists in maintaining the myth that it had wanted to build the new home for PALM in Gungahlin rather than Dickson. I suspect that Mr Stanhope will not want that memo. If he does get that memo, he will not want to table the memo in this place, because I suspect that it shows, as Mr Lamont asserted at the time, that the Labor government of the day did make the decision to put PALM at Dickson and passed over the opportunity to build PALM's new home in Gungahlin.

Mr Berry: That is not true.

MR HUMPHRIES: Then get the memo. It proves what I am saying.

Mr Berry: I will get to my feet in a minute.

MR HUMPHRIES: Get the memo and table it in this place and we will all know. Mr Speaker, as crocodile tears are being shed about how this government will not build an employment base in Gungahlin, I am reminding everybody concerned in this debate that that was the last major building that any government in the ACT built to house public servants. Apart from things such as joint emergency services centres, police stations and so on, which obviously have to be location based, that was the last general government office building constructed in the ACT by the ACT government. So the last chance to build something in Gungahlin which has occurred in the last six or seven years occurred under the former Labor government and they missed the chance.

MR BERRY (6.16): I found that contribution to the debate to be quite incredible. Mr Humphries constructs a document that he has not seen, tells us what is in it and then criticises it. That is a mysterious way of operating.

Mr Hargreaves: He has Gary-ed the papers.

MR BERRY: I think there is an air of Gary about this matter. Mr Speaker, I can say that I was pretty close to the events. I have not been able to rush upstairs, neither would I be able to, and rake through a whole heap of papers to dig anything out. But I know what was the position of the Labor Party at that time. As far as I am concerned, the position of the party was that there ought to be some construction at Gungahlin. I was there and I counter what Mr Humphries says. I was there and he is constructing his view out of a paper which he claims that he has seen and which does not exist-or does it exist?

Mr Humphries: It does exist, yes.

MR BERRY: It does exist, but you have not seen it and you do not know what is in it.

Mr Hargreaves: How do you know it exists?

Mr Humphries: Because the public service has told us that it exists.

MR BERRY: How do you know what is in it? That is the curious thing.

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