Page 46 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 23 May 1989
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MR SPEAKER: Order! I remind members that when they are whispering to one another their voices are being picked up by the microphones.
MR MOORE: Mr Kaine went on to say that this was not really a matter of public importance at all because hardly anybody had spoken to him.
Mr Kaine: I said nobody did; let us be fair.
MR MOORE: In fact, not even one person had spoken to him about this objection. Of course they would not be raising the objection with him at all. But I assure the Assembly that many people have certainly spoken to me and my colleagues about this very matter.
Mr Kaine: Did you take a telephone poll?
MR MOORE: Many of those who spoke to me were eminent legal persons. I do not doubt that there are some people here capable of tapping the phone, if that is what you said, Mr Kaine? He went on to say that in negotiations the demands of the Rally were absolutely outrageous and our negotiations were outrageous. I find that quite amazing when in fact we managed to find an agreeable position and Mr Kaine walked out of those negotiations.
It seems to me that the real question here is how the people of the ACT are best served, Mr Speaker, and I submit the way the people of the ACT are best served is by having a system without a formal opposition.
MR DUBY (3.52): Mr Collaery and the Residents Rally's objections to the amendment of standing orders to provide for the position of the Leader of the Opposition are a complete turnaround from its position prior to that issue being raised in the Assembly on 11 May. This stems from the Rally's misguided belief that it would be on the government benches, and that its position would be filled by some other party in this house. What is more, I find it remarkable that Mr Collaery accepted nomination for that very position when he now claims that it should not exist at all.
To me it smacks of sour grapes and puts the stance he has taken today in disrepute. It appears that he lost the vote because members of the opposition - not those members of the Assembly who are members of the Government, but members of the Opposition - chose to vote for Mr Kaine. Mr Kaine is in opposition today and not Chief Minister of this Territory because he is a man of integrity. Unlike Mr Collaery and the Residents Rally, he was not prepared to form a government which relied, at the end of the day, on the supporting vote of the Abolish Self Government Coalition member, Mr Stevenson. He was not prepared to let the ACT community be held to ransom by an avowed supporter of the Citizens Electoral Council and all the things that that organisation stands for, something that the Residents
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