Page 797 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 March 2005
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
minister and taken over by the Chief Minister. He talked about the subject of my complaining about not getting on with the job. I quote:
I am disappointed that yet more time will be lost, as the Chief Minister has stated it will take him a couple of weeks to establish an implementation body.
I went on to say:
Had the ACT Labor Party not engaged in petty politics earlier this year, that body would already exist, and be ready to implement these recommendations.
I was referring to the Liberal Party’s proposal to establish a bushfire reconstruction authority.
What the press release goes on to say is that, if we had already established the bushfire reconstruction authority, which this government ruled out of hand absolutely, we would not have had to have these delays and we could have got on with the job with an authority making decisions as the time goes on.
MR SPEAKER: Order! You are starting to stray.
MRS DUNNE: That is the first occasion when the Chief Minister took one sentence out of context to misrepresent me.
The other occasion was a press release during the election campaign, dated 13 October 2004, entitled “‘Water Policy’ product of a drip under pressure”. It refers to the release of the government’s water policy, which was released at the 11th hour. It starts off:
A “Water Policy” which didn’t address the vital question of future storage was “about as useful as water-wings in the Sahara”, Shadow Planning and Environment Minister Vicki Dunne said today.
We talked about it—
MR SPEAKER: What is the point?
MRS DUNNE: I am coming to the point, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Well, come to it quickly.
MRS DUNNE: Three paragraphs down—I will read the whole paragraph so that we can see the context that Mr Stanhope left behind to give another picture. I have talked about the fact that Mr Stanhope had realised that there were problems with the cross-border thing. It says—
Mr Corbell: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: this standing order allows members to identify where they have been misrepresented—not to provide three, five or seven minutes worth of context but to explain where they have been misrepresented. Mrs Dunne is not doing that. She is using it to make a debating point, and I would ask you to ask her to get to the point of where she was misrepresented.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .