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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1492 ..

Mr Speaker, I call on members to get on with the business. Mrs Dunne has accepted her medicine. Let’s put aside the hypocrisy that I have just talked about, the horse trading, and what is clearly a vengeance attack on the part of the government.

MR SMYTH (Leader of the Opposition) (12.02): Mr Speaker, the debate today is a curious one and one that was not unexpected, but I think that it is a sad day for the Assembly and, particularly, a sad day for Ms MacDonald, who has been hung out to dry by her party. The tradition in this place and the tradition in Westminster has always been that, when you make a mistake or something wrong is brought to your attention, you must take steps at the first available opportunity to rectify the situation.

When this mistake was brought to the attention of Mrs Dunne and she admitted that it was a mistake—she did not think that it was at the time but, looking back, felt that maybe she should have been more circumspect—she took steps to rectify it. Those steps are clearly outlined in the committee’s report. She went to her committee and attempts were made to undo any damage that might have been perceived, and life went on.

Punishment for mistakes is normally meted out when a member or a minister fails to take responsibility for his or her actions and/or fails to correct the record and/or fails to apologise or, indeed, refuses to apologise to this place when requested. Often people are requested to correct the record or to apologise for things that they have done. Mrs Dunne has done that. She has taken responsibility, she has apologised, and at the absolute outset when it was brought to her attention she took steps to correct the situation.

If we want to draw on a parallel, the debate seems to be tit for tat with the debate on Mr Corbell last year. Mr Corbell did not do that. It was only when the motion was set in place to establish a privileges committee to look at the activities of Mr Corbell that Mr Corbell came in here and, right at the very end of his speech, grudgingly apologised. Mrs Dunne did not do that.

A committee was established to look at whether there was a contempt and the committee found that there was a contempt, but the committee went on to qualify what it had found by saying that we need some more training because that is really something of which we all need to be aware. Ms Tucker spoke in her speech about its not being a question of how long a member has been here. She actually cited me as an example. I was here for a term, I was here for three years, before I became a chair. Being a chair is somewhat different and there is a learning curve. As parliamentary practice evolves, the way in which chairs perform and behave evolves with them.

I think that it is simplistic to say that Mrs Dunne has been here for such a long time that she should have known better. Maybe she should have, but that is not a judgment we can make because we do not know what people are exposed to over time, what their actual involvement has been, and actually doing it is somewhat different from watching, observing or reading about it. So, on that point. I would agree with Ms Tucker.

Ms Dundas raised a point about the previous privileges committee finding contempt but saying that no punishment should be meted out. Ms Dundas made the point that the issue was downgraded to one of grave concern. The other thing that the Assembly needs to be aware of is that its standing in the community will be based largely on consistency and,

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