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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1488 ..

prepared to go through that again. Frankly, I felt that it was even in her interest that most people did not say what they had to say so everyone else could hear it unless they were looking to source the information, because it was simply about a committee member speaking on the actions of another committee member, in this instance the chair. There was no other intention there; there was nothing sinister, as inferred or implied by the smug Mr Cornwell. To say otherwise, frankly, is baseless.

I would be happy to move an amendment to reduce the motion to one of grave concern rather than its being a censure of Mrs Dunne if Mrs Dunne gives an undertaking to this Assembly today that she will stand down as the chair of the planning and environment committee. I make clear now that anyone implying that any member of this committee is interested in taking on the role of a chair months out of an election is an idiot. This is about accountability. This is about us upholding the standards and the principles that we expect of others. When we are here to help create laws for the community, we should not be above those same laws that we help create.

My concern is that, despite the fact that the privileges committee chaired by Ms Tucker did an excellent job that we just should have been able to accept and move on, Mrs Dunne could not leave it at that. She had to get her comment in about not having done anything wrong. I know that she showed contrition in this place the other day. Obviously, it was not genuine, because if it was genuine she would not have made the comment that is in the paper today. That is what I have a concern with.

I had no intention of supporting this motion. I think that Ms Tucker’s job on this committee was adequate and we should have just left it at that and moved on, but it is obvious to me that Ms Tucker—

MR SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

MR CORNWELL: Mr Speaker, I seek leave to table the transcript of evidence given by Mrs Cross to the Select Committee on Privileges on 8 March.

Leave granted.

MR CORNWELL: I present the following paper:

Privileges 2004—Select Committee—Transcript of evidence in camera, dated 8 March 2004—Uncorrected proof copy.

MR STEFANIAK (11.49): When I saw the article in the Canberra Times that we were going to have this motion of censure, I looked at the heading and the start of the article to see whether it was a bit of an April Fool’s joke, but apparently it was not.

I want to raise a number of issues, Mr Speaker. Firstly, Mrs Dunne has apologised about five times. She apologised again today. I will leave it to her to explain to you the words reported in the Canberra Times. I do not know whether she said them or the context in which they were spoken. She can tell you all about that. But this matter has gone on for a number of months and on every occasion she has apologised.

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