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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 13 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 3902 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

across every issue in this place and we have a responsibility to support our votes in this place with arguments. That is an extremely heavy workload. It may be that this is something Mrs Cross does not understand because, I acknowledge, she has not been on the crossbench for very long-

Mrs Cross: Don't patronise me, Kerrie.

MS TUCKER: I am actually trying to be kind, Mrs Cross; I am not trying to patronise you. It may be that you do not know yet because you have only been here for two weeks or so while we have been sitting and you have not actually participated in debates. The point is that once you start doing that work you may understand why your proposal is so offensive to Roslyn Dundas and me. We wanted an opportunity to work cooperatively, to share the work of the committees, and I think that there has been a very unfortunate start to the relationship on the crossbench, although I will certainly put it behind me straightaway, as I always do, and just move on.

But the point is that I did have a meeting with Ms Dundas and Mrs Cross over a month ago and asked that we try to work cooperatively on this matter and come up with a consensus which would have meant that we could have done some deal with committees. We could have listened to each other and understood where we wanted to be. I was hoping that we could come up with an agreed position. Unfortunately, the first thing I knew after that meeting about Mrs Cross' position was when I saw her notice of motion on the notice paper. I do not think that that is a good way to work in this place. We need to be more cooperative than that.

I support this motion of Ms Dundas, although I understand that Labor will not support it. I heard Mr Hargreaves' argument and I agree with his comments about forcing someone onto a committee. I think that is undesirable, but, as I said, it was over a month ago that I attempted to get a resolution of this matter so that that would not be what would happen. I think that that was mainly the argument of Mr Hargreaves. I do not understand why Labor is taking the position it is taking, but we will continue to do the work that we do.

Every committee that I am on is interesting. Every committee in this place is interesting, I do not understand why someone cannot commit themselves to any committee, because it is all important work. In fact, it is our responsibility as professionals to perform to our greatest capacity in doing the committee work that we have. Maybe it is not about a pet interest, but every committee deals with extremely important work and we have no choice but to do the work.

MR CORNWELL (12.00): I listened with interest to Ms Tucker's comments. I must say that I was surprised that there had not been the consultation that I had hoped there would be between the crossbenchers, but that is not a criticism of her comments. It did, however, answer a question that has puzzled me, that is, that in the moving of this motion originally no reasons were given; the motion was simply moved. Having been here for some time, I am a bit of a cynic and my suspicions become aroused if that happens when someone gets up and moves a motion. Apart from being arrogant towards other members, it implies that they have the numbers and, therefore, do not have to justify putting up the motion.

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