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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1480 ..

… there is no degree of contempt: it is either contempt or it is not. As with other things, you are just not a little bit pregnant, you are pregnant. If you have committed contempt, it is not just a little bit of contempt, it is contempt ... What we are talking about is contempt; it is not graded or anything like that.

It has been demonstrated here by the minister’s own admission that it was deliberate … This was deliberate, culpable contempt ...

Mrs Dunne went on about whether an apology was a sincere apology or just forced. I will not go any further than just remind members of what she said at the time.

She then referred to Erskine May, as quoted in the House of Representatives Practice. She went on to say:

It is a matter of discretion … for this house ... it is not appropriate for the Estimates Committee to make a recommendation as to whether or not there should be a punishment.

I think she meant the privileges committee. She continued:

It is the responsibility of the Estimates Committee to find out whether a contempt has been committed and to report on that. It is inappropriate for this committee to have made a recommendation that no further action be taken ...

What has changed in a matter of months? I will tell you what has changed—the fact that it is now Mrs Dunne who is in the dock. We all know and we can all very rapidly imagine the contribution Mrs Dunne would have made to a debate like this today had it been a member of this side of the chamber against whom the motion had been moved. So that is why I asked my office to just go back a matter of a few months to what was said by Mrs Dunne in this place. I ask members to compare what Mrs Dunne said in this place in November last to what she has said today.

MR CORNWELL (11.14): Mr Speaker, I am conscious that the convention of this Assembly is that a motion of this nature should be debated immediately and take precedence over all other business. However, it is rather unfortunate that the report of the Select Committee on Privileges is still set down for debate under Assembly business. I regret that because it places at least one member of the privileges committee in an extremely embarrassing position.

The Labor Party has decided to bring on a motion of censure against Mrs Dunne. However, let me remind members that Ms MacDonald, one of the Labor Party members of the privileges committee, is one of the three members who unanimously agreed with the recommendations of the committee. I am not out to attack Ms MacDonald in any way, shape or form. I do, however, wish to place on record that I feel extremely embarrassed for her because she has obviously had her views in relation to this report ignored by her own party. That is an embarrassing situation for any member of a party, because in good faith Ms MacDonald has agreed to these recommendations but her party has decided that that will be swept aside.

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