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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1497 ..

Mr Speaker, I wish to speak briefly to this amendment. It changes the wording of this motion from a censure to one of this Assembly expressing grave concern about the actions of Mrs Dunne. As I said in the substantive debate, I believe that this Assembly can express grave concern about the actions, regardless of whether Mrs Dunne has apologised for them.

I would like to say that this debate has been quite interesting in the way that people have thrown accusations at each other across the chamber about whether or not they have changed their position on the role of censure motions, the role of privileges committees and the outcomes of those reports. I do not think that it would be in error to say that both the opposition and the government have changed their positions in relation to censure motions and the outcome of privileges reports; but, to be consistent in my own mind, I think that this motion needs to reflect the grave concern of this Assembly. I hope that this Assembly will see the consistency in that and support the amendment.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The question is that the amendment be agreed to.

MS DUNDAS: Mr Speaker, I seek leave to speak again very briefly.

Leave granted.

MS DUNDAS: The other thing I wanted to say is that, quite clearly, I have moved this amendment without asking for any action in return. The decisions of the planning and environment committee are the decisions of the planning and environment committee. This amendment has been moved to this motion just in the context of this Assembly. I refute the comment that Mrs Cross made that she would only accept an amendment if Mrs Dunne decided to step down. I am not moving this amendment with any caveats.

MRS CROSS (12.21): I will not be supporting Ms Dundas’s amendment. That would be consistent with what I said before. Contrary to the silly comments made by Mr Pratt, it has nothing to do with horse trading. I was giving Mrs Dunne an opportunity to do the right thing as a responsible chair of the committee, given that she has been found in contempt by the privileges committee, even though the privileges committee said that she did have intent to do the wrong thing.

Mr Smyth contrived to use every red herring in the book regarding what this is all about. This is about right and wrong. It is interesting to me that a lot of the people opposite have gone on today about how many times Mrs Dunne has apologised. Frankly, none of that really matters because of the fact that she came out publicly in the Canberra Times today saying that she had nothing wrong.

Nothing Mr Smyth can say, no way that he sugar coats it, can change the definition of those words and, whether she meant it about her being removed as chair or some silly plot that some people on that side were referring to, that is utter nonsense. A committee of this Assembly has found her in contempt.

I will make another comment, because there seemed to be inconsistencies on that side. They are black when they want to be black, they are white when they want to be white,

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