Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 13 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 3945 ..

MRS CROSS: I present the following paper:

Member's e-mail messages-Statutory declaration by Mary Elizabeth Elliott, dated 21 November 2002.

MR SMYTH (4.38): Mr Speaker, the irony of Mrs Cross standing up, when she is fighting against a suspension of standing orders, and asking for leave to table a statutory declaration in defence of her case that Ms Tucker not table a statutory declaration in defence of the other side of the case, is the most amazingly silly thing I have ever seen occur in this place!

To add to the debate, I wish to read from the transcript of the privileges committee. It is the part of the transcript where Ms Tucker, Mr Hargreaves and I were taking Mr Moore's testimony. It reads this way:

MR SMYTH: Mrs Cross in her testimony also said that she thought it was impossible for Gary not to have known about the emails. From what you heard, was there any indication that Mr Humphries knew that Mike had these emails?

Mr Moore: I had no impression that Mr Humphries knew. I only ever knew about the one email, which was the one Mike had given me. At that time, until the police arrived, I was unaware that there was more than one email.

The conversation goes on. Mr Hargreaves asked Mr Moore:

Do you know if the issue of the emails-the furore which had erupted-was the subject of a conversation between Mr Humphries and Mr Osborne?

Mr Moore: No, I do not know.

Mr Speaker, it is abundantly clear that there is no evidence to support this. There is no reason to stop the tabling of this document. Mrs Cross should be as gracious as the rest of this Assembly has been in allowing the tabling of her document without any debate or fuss.

She says that there needs to be some sort of arbiter about whether we, as members, can get on with our job-and tabling of documents is about our job. I said this the other day, and I will say it again: to try to stop somebody from tabling a document, so that it goes through some sort of vetting process because it might offend the sensibilities of a member or expose a member, I think is a contempt of what we do in this place. It stops all of us from doing our job. We will not stop her, and we have no intention of being stopped either.

MR SPEAKER: The time for this debate has expired.

Question put:

That Ms Tucker's motion be agreed to.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .