ActionScript 2.0 :: Delegate Versus Instance?

when i'm coding directly on the timeline, i usually create a var like this:

Code:
var home:MovieClip = this;

so i always have something to reference the main timeline's scope. how could i do this in a class? delegate.create gets a little confusing.

i tried a few things like the following:

Code:
class com.myClass
{
public var className:String = "myClass";
public static var version:String = "0.0.1";

[code]...

of course this is redundant because it'll scope just fine as parseNews();, but i'm just wondering why it's letting me scope it like this here and not in the onLoad declaration?