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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 3450 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

In relation to the number of bills, I would have to check the numbers now, but I looked at the very same issue. Indeed, the government has introduced 49 bills in this first period. The comparison I have with the first year of the Carnell government that you quoted is that there were 48 bills introduced in that period. I will check that, now that you have used a contrary number. It goes to the point-it is the one thing I do agree with. What an absurd measure of anything counting bills is-but it is a game you would remember.

Mr Humphries: That was what you did! You did it downstairs-to the media.

MR STANHOPE: I did not! I have never used it-I think it is the most absurd measure. It was Michael Moore who used to do it all the time-I remember it-the great legislation body count. It is absurd.

It is the sort of thing I have always treated with disdain-until I saw the ABC picking it up as a valid measure, this morning, and castigating all of us in this place, not just the government. The ABC was castigating the entire Assembly for being lazy, as a result of the measure of legislation. I take enormous offence and umbrage at that. It is not a measure I use, but it was used by the ABC and picked up now by you. It is absolutely absurd.

Mr Humphries: You used it in question time, did you not?

MR STANHOPE: Well, not to attack you-to have a little go at the ABC. I did not actually address it to you at all.

The point we are discussing at the moment is Labor's achievements in this first fine year of office. That was a distraction. You have distracted me by those two other matters.

Mr Smyth: You are easily distracted though, Jon.

MR STANHOPE: I am not so easily distracted. I have a passing interest in Mr Humphries' future-as do you, Mr Smyth.

Mr Smyth: You spend a lot of time talking about us-because you do not have anything on your own slate to talk about.

MR STANHOPE: I have a passing interest in it, as do you. As I said in question time today, I am enormously proud of the Labor Party's achievements in our first year in office, after seven years of Liberal government.

It has been a good transition to government-the Labor Party has done what it said it would do. It has delivered good government, and it has been good, measured, steady, strategic government. It has been focused. We have been focused on our commitments; we have been focused on our promises, and we have delivered on our promises.

There is no area of administration in the ACT in relation to which we have not delivered as we said we would. Mr Humphries belatedly and begrudgingly acknowledges that some good things have been done. However, he does not have the good grace to acknowledge that a $27 million investment in education is a very strategic investment in

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