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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1482 ..

election coming. There could be an attempt, of course, to change the committee chair. Mr Hargreaves states he does not want to be the committee chair. Well, he is a committee chair already. There could, of course, be a situation that other members of this committee are interested in the committee chairmanship.

Mrs Cross: Of course, that is the motivation for all this. Wake up.

MR CORNWELL: Yes, there could be, Mrs Cross. I am interested in your comments because I, too, like all members, will have the opportunity of reading your in-camera comments to the privileges committee. If you look askance at me—

Mr Corbell: Point of order, Mr Speaker. While I accept that a censure debate is by its nature extremely broad ranging, I think even Mr Cornwell would have to concede that he is testing the limits of the relevance rule, and I would ask you to perhaps remind him of the substance of this debate.

MR CORNWELL: Mr Speaker, may I speak to that? It is relevant, sir, as I will demonstrate, if you will allow me to do so.

MR SPEAKER: Well, we will look forward to you demonstrating that, Mr Cornwell.

MR CORNWELL: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I was just about to explain that the in-camera evidence given by Mrs Cross has in fact been approved and authorised for publication. It is important that I make that point. Ironically, the motion in the committee to do that was moved by Ms MacDonald, but never mind.

The fact is that there were certain quite serious allegations levelled against Mrs Dunne in that in-camera hearing. Mrs Cross said she wanted to give her evidence in-camera because she did not want people in the gallery. Okay, it was a rather strange request. But subsequently the evidence that she put forward was in fact scurrilous—that is the word I would use—against Mrs Dunne and suggested, unfortunately, that there are other reasons for this motion coming forward today, and I will be very interested to hear Mrs Cross’s comments later.

The fact is that we have now got a situation where this committee’s unanimous findings have been overturned by the Labor Party and they have cut adrift their member of this committee, and I regard that as more serious than anything Mr Hargreaves may say.

MS DUNDAS (11.24): Mr Speaker, I did want more time to consider this matter but, as other members who have clearly made up their mind do not want to speak yet, I will have to speak in order to make sure that the debate continues.

Mr Speaker, censure is a quite vexing question for this Assembly. I think we need to look at the core of what the privileges committee was investigating. It was looking at whether or not Mrs Dunne’s actions constituted a contempt, and that was the clear intention of the Assembly when it established the privileges committee.

What the committee has found, after carefully examining what is meant by contempt of the privilege of this Assembly and of the House of Representatives, is that Mrs Dunne

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