Page 9 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 May 1989
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mine. His executive gave him more directions in the past few weeks than mine gave to me. He misrepresents himself and he misrepresents me and I resent it.
For some reason, unexplained to me, and known only to the Commonwealth Parliament which put the Act in place, it is prescribed that the Chief Minister shall be elected from the floor of the Assembly. It is the only parliament in Australia where that provision is contained in the enabling legislation. It is equally sensible that the leader of the opposition be so elected. There is no inconsistency in the proposition whatsoever. There is nothing Machiavellian in the proposal. It was our intention that it be done by the parties in opposition and that the party in government should not participate because we believe it is inappropriate that it should.
I suggest that Mr Collaery might like to withdraw the implication and the imputation that he has made about my character and that of the Chief Minister of this Assembly. If he is not willing to do so, he is declaring his intention in this Assembly to set up a situation of adversarial relationships, of confrontation and conflict, despite the things that he has been talking about to his electorate and my electorate about a co-operative form of government.
Mr Collaery is on the wrong track. He needs to reconsider his position and he certainly needs to see, from right now, his implication of some sort of underhanded treatment or activity. I do not accept it. I do not believe the Chief Minister does. Mr Collaery needs to consider his position very carefully.
MR MOORE: Mr Kaine has suggested that there is no basic conflict in this concept because it is consistent with the election of the Chief Minister. We have the election of a Chief Minister first by a majority on the floor of the Assembly, and that same majority now is to appoint its own opposition and its own opposition leader. That is the sort of concept of democracy that we believe came out of countries like Russia and so forth 50 years ago. The concept of appointing your own opposition leader when you are in government is totally unpalatable to any person with a reasonable sense of democracy.
MR WHALAN: It is quite extraordinary, in two aspects, that the leader of the Residents Rally should speak in the manner that he has today. The first is the feigned
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