Page 3865 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 27 August 2008
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had been a reneging on the pair there would have been no misunderstanding. I think that you should review what the Chief Minister said and make up your own mind as to whether that was an imputation on your integrity.
MR SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne, I do not want to get involved in the debate, and I take what you have said as you have said it, but for everybody’s information, if somebody gets trapped in here because I have ordered the doors to be locked, in future, if they appeal to me on the basis that a pair is in operation, I will allow people to take off.
Mrs Dunne: I will make sure that, if it happens tomorrow, Mr Speaker, that is what happens.
Election campaign forums
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Minister for Health, Minister for Children and Young People, Minister for Disability and Community Services, Minister for Women) (10:48): In the lead-up to the election, all of us here are invited to many candidates forums. In fact, it is a part of the hustle and bustle of an election campaign that we all look forward to. Quite a number of organisations have already arranged those meetings. I take this opportunity to talk about an interesting one that I attended at lunch today, the annual general meeting of the National Disability Services, NDS. Over a month ago, they wrote to all candidates, to individual parties, to come and address this meeting in a kind of candidates forum—a political panel.
This group represents all the peak disability groups. There were probably 40 people there today when I got there. It was perhaps the most interesting political panel I have ever been to because I was the only person to show up. The NDS actually apologised to me and said that the panel would no longer be a panel but that I would have the floor for the entire time. They expressed some concern about this. The Greens, to their credit, had apologised as they were unable to be there, but they had not heard back from anyone else, including the other major political party.
This was a significant forum—or it was meant to be—for parties to come along and indicate their policies on disability services to the people of the ACT. Certainly, I took the opportunity to discuss at length the record of the ACT government, our vision for the future and the challenges ahead. But it was interesting to note that the shadow minister for disability, who I believe is Mrs Burke, did not even respond to the invitation and no other candidate from any of the minor parties took the opportunity to attend.
I look forward to more of those candidates forums, if we can organise it, in the lead-up to the election. Certainly, this government takes those candidates forums very seriously and we will be attending all of them to express our full range of policies and our agenda, not only from the seven years in government but for the next four as well.
ACT—geological map and guidebook
Leukaemia—fundraising
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella) (10:51): I want to say a few words firstly about a launch I did just the other week—the launch of the geological map, guidebook and
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