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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1898 ..

The trouble is that Mr Corbell was up on the podium; he was not down there talking to the people. I chose not to speak at that rally because it was a community rally where people should be speaking, not politicians.

Mr Stanhope: Not Brendan Smyth or Bill Stefaniak?

MRS DUNNE: Brendan Smyth and Bill Stefaniak were representing the Liberal party. We did not want 1,000 politicians there. We wanted people telling their story, and their message was loud and clear. They had been dudded by Simon Corbell; they had been dudded by Jon Stanhope; they had been dudded by Labor.

Mr Stanhope: You wait until tomorrow. Then we’ll see who’s been dudded!

MRS DUNNE: One press release, Mr Stanhope, will not improve your credibility in this town. One press release will not do it. I am sorry. I have to do it because it so nicely matches his tie. I knew this would happen tonight as soon as the opposition said they would not support it. We have had a major Jon Stanhope dummy spit and a reverse pike from Simon Corbell. They have been sitting here saying, “We are the government. We can have our way. We don’t care how bad the law is. We will have our way and, if we can’t have our way, we will threaten you with the public.”

All through Mr Corbell’s homily about how virtuous he was being, Mr Stanhope spent his time peddling mistruths about what is in a piece of legislation that he should have read. If he had read it, he would know that what he said was untrue.

Mrs Burke: But he says he does not read everything. He admits that.

MRS DUNNE: That’s right! He doesn’t read things. He forgot—or maybe he forgot that he read it. But he was there saying that there were a whole range of things in our proposed legislation which are not there.

Mr Stanhope: Precisely. No appeals to the AAT. No appeals to anything.

MRS DUNNE: Let’s not get all precious about the AAT. You want to take away appeal rights in appropriate circumstances; we want to take away appeal rights in appropriate circumstances. So we could actually get together and work out what the best circumstances are, except you suffer too much from hubris, Mr Chief Minister.

Mr Stanhope: Let’s build without preparing any assessments!

MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Stanhope! Mrs—

MRS DUNNE: Mr Speaker, this is entirely about hubris. This is about the environment minister wanting to get his own way. He has had a bad day—aah. It has been crook. But everyone else has had a hard day too. He has had a bad day and he wants to get a win out of something. But I am sorry: this is not it. This is bad legislation. No matter how important the GDE is, it can wait two more weeks—after you have stuffed people around for 2½ years.

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