Page 2870 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 June 2010
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MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (11.25): I rise to briefly respond to the Chief Minister’s quoting of my press release. And it is always important to go back and get the original document, because, whilst the Chief Minister read out most of my press release, he forgot the last paragraph.
Mrs Dunne: Selectively quoting again.
Mr Smyth: You’ve been verballed by the Chief Minister?
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Order, members! Mr Rattenbury does not need your help.
MR RATTENBURY: I appreciate it but I do not need it. The last paragraph says:
… The important thing now is to avoid petty squabbles about whose legislation gets passed and focus on putting in place the best possible legislation to improve safety on Canberra’s roads …
And that is exactly the basis on which Ms Bresnan has made the arguments this morning on behalf of the Greens. That was on 27 May. That was the date that the government released their exposure draft legislation, over a month ago now. What that meant was that on that date we had two pieces of legislation side by side. We were able to sit down and compare them. All we were able to do was look at the government’s legislation, which was presented with the full resources of the department behind it—all the research, all the capabilities the department brings to the debate—and ascertain that the two pieces of legislation were almost identical, that the model put forward by the government was not substantially different to the model that Mr Hanson had put forward.
At that point, as the Greens, we were able to make a decision that the legislation was pretty much right to go. There was some work needed to be done on amendments, and that is why we see amendments coming along today. But we knew that there was not a wildly different option on the table, that we had the core of a consensus to move forward on legislation that could work. That reflected the work Mr Hanson had done, the research that his office had done on other jurisdictions, working with parliamentary counsel, and it reflected the work that Mr Stanhope and his department had done to draft up a piece of legislation that they considered good enough to table as a piece of exposure draft legislation. That is the basis on which we are able to move forward today, because we had enough evidence on the table to make a decision to go forward.
Clauses 9 and 10 agreed to.
Clause 11.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (11.27), by leave: I move amendments Nos 9 and 10 circulated in my name together [see schedule 1 at page 3023].
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