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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (15 June) . . Page.. 1907 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

their way into this Assembly, they worked out that they needed more staff, and the way to get that was to pressure the Labor government for it. The Labor government at the time was told, "If you want to get your legislation program through, we need more staff to read it. I can see that you have a busy legislation program, as Labor Party governments do."

Mr Moore and the Moore Independents-by now Independents-wanted more staff to read all this legislation. Pragmatics being what it is, because of the necessity to get Labor legislation initiatives through and for the good governance of the territory, we folded. That was a mistake of the past. We should have stood our ground and told Mr Moore to nick off. The same should have been done for all the other Independents who have used their balance of power to get more goodies.

That was the start of the rot. Once they got an increased staffing allowance, it then became de rigeur. When the Moore Independents ran at the next election, there were banners out everywhere. Of course, only the leader of a party got an allowance and you got a bigger allowance if you left the party and became an Independent. It did not take Einstein long to work that one out, and pretty soon people were Independents again.

Then we moved on; governments came and went. Who was the famous footballer who got sent off the field? It was John Lomax. John Lomax mistakenly belted somebody at a Raiders game and got sent off. He got a period off the paddock for that. Ossie over here got a slot in the game. He threw a couple of passes in a great game. He was a great footballer who did a great job. He found his way into the Assembly as a footballer and a good bloke. He had no real agenda. That is a fair enough view of the fellow. Later he was joined by his mate over here, Mr Rugendyke-a good bloke, a community cop, who was able to massage the people.

I bet they thought, "If we throw in with the Greens and Mr Moore we will have to share the balance of power with those buggers. We would be better off holding on to it ourselves." They were right, because the two of them now essentially control the government. Mr Moore saw a few opportunities. He could see the two from the Osborne group lining up. They were now Independents, by the way. He thought, "I had better get amongst the action here" and he and Kate Carnell found a few common things, save for about 40 that were put on a long list. Then of course the goodies started to flow. My colleague Mr Quinlan mentioned them.

But it gets worse. All of them at election time say, "We can pretend to be a party, like the rest of them, for the purposes of an election. But none of them other bloody Independents can, because they are out there and we are in here." This is the old Indian train syndrome. You fight like billyo to get on the train, and when you are on it you fight like billyo to stop others from getting on it. That is what this is about. You set yourselves up in a nice little niche and then you try to create the circumstances to prevent other Independents from challenging you. When you get in here, you are very quick to say what a great thing it is to be an Independent, how you represent an Independent view and are not part of those political parties that are being manipulated by hidden faces. Of course, they are not keen to say that political parties are a filtering agent for members who find their way into politics and that if they were subjected to that filtering agent perhaps they would not make it. That is the real story.

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