Page 1763 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2011
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certain things by certain dates. Frankly, you start to wonder whether it is lack of political will, lack of resources or simply a case of the government not seeming to quite get around to these things.
Far from taking the approach that Mr Stanhope suggested, Ms Le Couteur has operated with integrity. She waited for her time frame to pass. Unfortunately it did pass, so Ms Le Couteur moved ahead, because we believe this is an important issue that needs to get something done about it. The other problem, of course, in not moving forward on this bill today is that it means we will now be in for a long wait, because under standing order 136 the Assembly will not be able to act on this issue again this year if this bill is voted down. That is the reality. It puts off action for some time into the future.
We could agree on this in principle today and then work on some details. If the government has specific improvements, the Greens are totally open to that. But because of some pigheaded commitment to “it has to be done our way or it’s the high way” we are going to come up against that unfortunate impasse. I think that is a sad situation for the Assembly; I think it is a sad situation for animal welfare in the ACT. I invite Mr Stanhope to reconsider his approach before we reach that point later this morning.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (11.26): I too would like to speak in favour today of Ms Le Couteur’s bill. The aspersions cast on Ms Le Couteur and her motives behind this bill by Mr Stanhope today are outrageous, as Mr Rattenbury has already outlined. We have experienced this on other occasions with particular issues with the government. We have waited for quite some time for something to appear in relation to this bill. As Mr Rattenbury outlined and as Ms Le Couteur has spoken about on a number of occasions in relation to this bill, Ms Porter had a draft discussion paper. I say that it was a draft discussion paper. But again, we have not seen anything appear in relation to that.
I experienced a similar situation—I digress slightly—with the solarium legislation. The government said, “Oh, yes, it’s coming, it’s coming.” That happened for about a year and a half. We tabled legislation because we were sick of waiting, and, lo and behold, I think the day I tabled the legislation the government announced they were going to put in place regulations. So it is something we have experienced previously, and it gets to that point where you get sick of waiting for something to appear so you decide to progress and put forward something which is going to be of benefit to the ACT community, as this legislation is.
As Mr Rattenbury has outlined today, we offered to adjourn debate after agreeing in principle to this legislation. We did something similar with the drug-driving legislation that was put forward by Mr Hanson. We agreed to it in principle, we allowed the government to go through their process, and with that particular legislation they came back with a piece of legislation which was almost exactly the same as Mr Hanson’s. So we allowed that process, and we were more than willing to allow that happen in relation to animal welfare legislation. But, the government did not agree to do that.
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