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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 13 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 3699 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

resignation in those circumstances was appropriate and honourable. I did not say, as Mrs Cross alleged in the course of her remarks, that I described this staff members as an honourable man or an innocent man. Neither of those things were said by me, but I have said that his resignation in the face of the report was an honourable thing to do.

Let me be clear. If I had condoned, encouraged or supported the culpable Liberal staff member to divert or appropriate someone else's email, I would apologise to this house. If I discovered that a colleague or Liberal staff member had actually done so, I would discipline that colleague or sack that staff member. If I had continued to employ a person who was found by an Assembly committee to have committed a contempt of the Assembly, I would apologise to this house. But, Mr Speaker, I have done none of those things.

As I said earlier, I regret the fact that Mr Wood did not receive emails intended for him and that the actions of the Liberal staff member contributed, whether intentionally or inadvertently, to that situation. The committee, I might point out, made it clear that the staff member did not divert the emails. But I accept that a failure to report receipt of them could contribute to the prolongation of that predicament that Mr Wood found himself in.

As the head of the Liberal Party in this place, I am even prepared to apologise to Mr Wood for the effect of these events on him and his work, but I should say that I feel that such an apology should be mutual. I did not intentionally allow Mr Wood to be affected in this way, and I would not have intentionally allowed Mr Wood to be affected in this way. But Mr Wood and some of his colleagues most assuredly have quite intentionally made allegations about the staff member concerned, indeed about Liberal staff in general, which were found to be untrue by the committee and which would be defamatory if made outside this place.

They allege that the interception of emails was intentional and illegal. They described in this place the actions of Liberal staff in general as having been hacking. "Hacking" carries a very specific connotation: the deliberate act of going into a computer system-

Mr Hargreaves: Who said that?

MR HUMPHRIES: You have done this on the floor of this chamber, and your colleagues have done so outside this chamber.

Mr Hargreaves: You had better dig out those words.

MR HUMPHRIES: I will have to do so. They allege that the interception of emails was intentional and illegal, a matter that the committee found in paragraph 4.19 to be untrue. In that paragraph the committee said:

that should be "able"-

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