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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 3024 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

aspirin or anything else." Research shows very clearly that methadone is still our most successful program. There was also the commencement of the Ted Noffs Foundation for young people and extra money. You can go back to the budget for those.

There is something else that I think was important for me to ask. Who will this referendum suit most of all? Where are the levels of self-interest? I touched on Labor, and I do not need to do that again. I think most importantly it will be useful to the conservatives. Within the Liberal Party and those around me, I think there are both small "l" liberals and conservatives. When I talk about conservatives, I am not talking about just the Liberal Party. I am talking about members within the Liberal Party, and I am talking of those on the crossbenches over there, and to a certain extent Mr Kaine, but I am not concerned about him, because by voting against it he has shown that he is not taking an attitude like that.

It seems to me that it is conservatives who in the coming election would benefit most greatly from this debate taking a major focus. I have been in this Assembly too long, with too many conservatives, including yourself, Mr Speaker, not to believe that our community will be much better off without such a strong conservative representation.

We have a Hare-Clark proportional representation system, and I think conservatives should be represented proportionately. I think they are over-represented. I do not say to each individual one, "You are better gone," although I could do that. What I am actually concerned to say is that we will be better off having less-

Mr Hargreaves: Don't feel restrained. Go for it, Michael. Let yourself off the leash, Michael.

MR MOORE: Don't you start anything, Mr Hargreaves. You might be the conservative I point to.

Referenda give a majority approach. This applies more strongly to citizen-initiated referenda. We will get on to that debate next week. Referenda give a majority view. A majority view is easy to pander to. A majority view is always a simple solution. I would like to echo the comments of Mr Stanhope when he used the example of the provision of needles and syringes. The majority view when that was implemented on a bipartisan basis was clearly against it. We think we have problems with our hospitals now. That is true right around Australia. Think of the level of problems had we had HIV spreading, as would have been the case if we had not had a needle and syringe provision program.

Referenda are about majorities. Parliaments can easily look after the majority. In fact, dictatorship, probably most successfully look after the majority. The challenge for parliaments is always to see how successfully you can look after your minority groups. That is why we should be incredibly wary of referenda, certainly citizen-initiated referenda, but we should be incredibly wary of a referendum on social policy.

Mr Stanhope raised the strange notion that the Chief Minister and Mr Smyth had somehow ratted on a cabinet position or a Liberal Party position on the supervised injecting room. That is not the case at all. I took to cabinet legislation on the supervised injecting room. I got the numbers in cabinet. Mr Smyth and Mrs Carnell supported that,

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