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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 4339 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

is maintained. It is about making sure that the education goes on. It is about early interdiction with programs. It is half the cost to stop somebody from taking up smoking than to stop somebody after they have taken up the evil weed.

When we make laws we need to give people some certainty. I think Mr Corbell has shown today that there is no certainty with December 2006 because he has already said that he intends to see whether he can bring the date forward again. I wonder about how the poor person who was given approval last week for a three-year exemption will feel. What certainty will they feel they have, having just heard the minister's words that he will go away and do some more work to see if he can do it earlier.

How can you trust a minister who says, "You can have an exemption for three years, but if I can knock it off earlier I will"? What does that expose us to as a territory? What does it expose us to in terms of compensation for those businesses that have taken the minister at his word, gained the exemption, done the right thing, gone about it in the right way, only to hear today that the minister will knock off the exemptions earlier if he can?

This is the sort of activity and attitude that the minister has in his planning: he gives no-one certainty. I think people desperately want an end date. They actually want to know that so that they can plan for that date. We have had a day of shifting sand, we have had a week of shifting sand, and what they will get when this debate is over today is nothing but shifting sand from a health minister who will go away and then seek to change his own amendment.

Mr Speaker, I think people deserve certainty. I think the smoking groups need to know when the exemptions will stop; those who are against smoking need to know when they will stop. I think that is fair and appropriate. Clubs, pubs, businesses and restaurants need to know when the exemptions will stop. That is fair; that is appropriate. I think we as a community need to say together, "That's the date, that's when smoking stops, let's work towards it."But that is not what we are going to get today. We have just had the revelation from the minister that, no matter what happens today, he will be back and he will attempt to change the date again.

Mr Corbell: You're misrepresenting my position and you know it.

MR SMYTH: The minister says that I am misrepresenting his position. I know, Mr Speaker, that I should not take his interjections. He just said, "I'll go away and, if I can, I will bring forward an earlier date."Those were his words. How is that misrepresenting his position? In a day of cynical horse trading, everything obviously is on the table and everything is open go and fair slather.

Mr Speaker, the community wants some certainty. They want to know when it will end so that all the groups with their competing interests can plan for that day. What they do not want to know is what the minister has revealed today, that is, that there is no certainty in this process. I will move my amendment. I think we should have the argument. I appreciate that we will lose-that is the nature of politics-but what you will have from us is consistency and what you will have from those opposite is yet to be determined because the minister has not made up his mind.

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