Final sitting week of legislative assembly filled with sparks as ACT election nears

The ACT will hold an election soon, and members of the legislative assembly have been ramping up attacks on their opposition in preparation.

Transcript

00:00The Greens were told today they couldn't put their proposal for a centralised monitoring

00:07system to a vote. They were told that was out of order. Labor had flagged its own amendment

00:13to reduce the number of poker machines in the territory to 1,000 by 2045. Now ultimately

00:19it didn't put that up, despite the Greens later saying they'd have backed it anyway.

00:25Now there are different versions on both sides as to how this played out behind the scenes

00:30but it appears both Labor and the Greens have attempted to show some product differentiation

00:37ahead of the election. For its part the opposition has largely stayed out of this dispute but

00:42has kept up its attacks on both parties.

00:46We were willing to walk into the Assembly today and vote for their amendment. Now bizarrely

00:50the Labor Party did not move their amendment today and I cannot understand why they did

00:54that.

00:55The easiest and simplest way to address this at this point was to focus on the areas where

01:00there was agreement, where the legislation could pass without dispute.

01:05Canberra Liberals have really been able to step up and show the Canberra community just

01:10how diabolical this Labor-Greens government has been.

01:13Most members are of course gearing up for a campaign but two who we know won't be back

01:18after the election are the Speaker Joy Birch and Liberal MLA Nicole Lauder. They've both

01:24given their valedictory speeches over the last two days and drawn some favourable reflections

01:29from all sides.

01:31So the government will officially go into caretaker mode next Friday which signals the

01:36starting gun for the five week campaign and election day of course is the 19th of October.