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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1819 ..

give answers in his tightly scripted reply to Mr Smyth to any of the material laid out by Mr Smyth. Since then other issues have been laid before us that need to be answered by the Chief Minister. We need to know, as many people have asked, where he was on that fateful Friday and Saturday. What was he doing? Accordingly, Mr Speaker, before Mr Smyth sums up at the end of this debate, I propose to move to suspend so much of standing orders as would prevent the Chief Minister from being given unlimited time to rebut the issues that have been put before us.

In summary, I, like the other members of the opposition, do not believe the claims of collective amnesia, the loss of notes or the failure to take them. I know what I was doing that day. I drove to the coast after I heard the announcement on the 12.30 news that there was no chance that the fire would come to town. I particularly remember that this warning was not given. Some elderly friends of mine almost died that afternoon because they believed that they would have been warned. They believed that a government that had warned them the previous year of the danger would warn them if conditions got bad. I doubt they will make the mistake of trusting this government again.

But that is not what is really at stake today. The issues are, first, that if we want a territory that is governable in the long term, not based on the need not to know, we cannot accept “the dog ate my homework” as an excuse. “The dog ate my homework” is not a legitimate response to an attempt to discover what actually happened. [Extension of time granted.] The “dog ate my homework” response to a legitimate inquiry is not the answer that we need to discover what actually happened on the day of the biggest disaster in our history.

Secondly, if the claims of memory loss, lack of communication, failure to consult or even to keep appropriate records, and the failure to ask obvious questions were true, they would expose a level of incompetence, indecision and negligence which would be even worse than the alternative scenario of knowing the truth, failing to act, and then lying to cover your tracks.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism, and Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming) (4.01): Mr Speaker, let me observe first that I think it is quite clear from what has been said today that virtually every member of the opposition has, in the language they used, called Mr Stanhope an outright liar one way or another. Each of those speakers did actually use terms like that. Some virtually said nothing else in their speeches, and Mrs Burke still remains the champion handwringer of the Assembly.

Let me say this: I am, of course, concerned about this sort of issue. But this is a house of politics and we can understand that the motivation is politics. During his speech, Mr Smyth made great play of the public derision that has arisen out of this and been visited upon Mr Stanhope, and that is certainly the case. It is the case that if mud is slung some sticks. Fortunately, some sticks to the hands of the slinger, and I certainly hope that that is the case today. I know from some of the people I have met from time to time that that is the case.

I notice that Mr Smyth was very quick out of the blocks in his speech to point out that he had to rationalise and correct in this place a misleading that had been directed at him. He described what he did as honourable but still went on to call Mr Stanhope a liar in so

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