Page 1257 - Week 05 - Thursday, 4 June 2020
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MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: You are claiming under standing order 46 that you have been misrepresented by Mr Parton?
MR BARR: I have.
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Barr.
MR BARR: The quotes that Mr Parton has attributed to me both misrepresent grievously what I said and imply that I would seek to control what people do in their spare time. I made it very clear that it is always up to individuals what they do with their own time and that, if they want to go to Queanbeyan to lose money on a poker machine, go for it. All I did was point out that if you play the poker machines, the odds are that you will lose money. And that is a fact, because they only return 87 per cent.
Further, I completely reject the assertion that I have a list on a whiteboard in my office. Seriously! There is no such list and the suggestion that I would have one is offensive. It seriously is. This is not student politics. You know a little better than that, Mr Parton. Grow up, please!
MS STEPHEN-SMITH (Kurrajong—Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Children, Youth and Families and Minister for Health) (3.46): I think it is telling that the shadow health minister, the shadow assistant health minister, the shadow minister for sport and recreation—none of them are speaking in this debate. Instead, we have Mr Coe, who, of course, moved the motion, and Mr Parton, who made it very clear that he was speaking in his portfolio of gaming, racing or whatever its actual formal title is.
Even more astonishing is Mr Parton’s assertion that it is the ACT Labor government who are playing favourites in regard to the public health directions when the main criticism of the public health directions, as they have been issued for step 2.1 of stage 2 of the ACT recovery plan, appears to be that they actually are too comprehensive; that we have chosen a risk approach that actually enables people to play a bit of indoor sport, as well as enabling people to go to a restaurant or a pub. As Mr Barr has pointed out in his contribution, this is not the case in New South Wales.
I would draw Mr Coe’s attention to something that he said in this chamber on 7 May 2020:
We firmly believe that you need to follow the health advice when it comes to dealing with the pandemic. We firmly believe that the health advisers, the doctors and all the experts should be informing the policy.
But apparently that does not apply when your preferred industry has a different view to that of the public health advisers. I am not just talking about our own Chief Health Officer, of course, as Mr Barr has clearly indicated; I am talking about the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, which laid out a three-step framework that was supported and agreed by national cabinet and with which the ACT’s stage 2.1, easing of restrictions, is absolutely in line.
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