Page 869 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 24 February 2009
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MR HARGREAVES: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. The issue is whether we should suspend standing orders so that Mr Coe can produce the names of those people who have supposedly contacted him. Quite frankly, it is a case where we do not believe it. We have been burnt in the past with these people across the—
Opposition members interjecting—
MR HARGREAVES: This is the only vehicle which can allow—
Opposition members interjecting—
MR HARGREAVES: Fifteen seconds and the generalissimo and his little mates—away they go. Mr Speaker, they are just trying to disrupt the matter. We are trying to give Mr Coe an opportunity to show whether or not he is a man of integrity, he is a man to come into this place and not attempt to put something into the conversation which is not quite true—and not to represent himself. We want him to show that he can substantiate the allegations that he makes that people have contacted him.
Mr Barr: To be fair to him, it probably wasn’t his question.
MR HARGREAVES: Yes, I do not think he actually wrote the question, so therefore maybe he would like to take us up on the offer and table the names of all of the people on that side of the house that have contacted those people, so that the Chief Minister can correspond with all of them—or, shall we say, both of them; I suspect they do not exist. These people are denying Mr Coe the opportunity to show that he is an honourable man. They are denying him that.
Members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, Mr Coe needs to know that this is a legislative assembly, not a pole-dancing place where people pay to go and have a look at it. I suggest that Mr Coe show that he is a man of integrity or whether he is not.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (3.02): We are debating whether or not to suspend standing orders. The Chief Minister seems to doubt that people are frustrated. I will quote from the Canberra Times of Saturday:
The ACT Chief Minister’s Department deputy chief executive, David Dawes, said 340 people had attended information sessions since the scheme’s launch in July.
He said 39 blocks were taken up, but those holding them were frustrated ...
That is one of the sources that Mr Coe was referring to when it was said that it was reported in the press that people were frustrated. There are people who have come to the opposition who have been frustrated by this scheme. That does not mean that we will divulge things, that we have heard in confidence, for the convenience of the Chief
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