Page 1246 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 23 August 1989
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We on this side of the house have had some difficulty over the last four months in terms of ministerial response to questions. We have raised the matter in debate, that we have felt at times that Ministers have not responded in the spirit of question time, where the actions of the Administration and the actions of Ministers are open to question.
We have complained that at times we have not received comprehensive answers. Indeed, in some cases the questions have not been answered at all. That is not part of the parliamentary system and it is not part of the consultative and open government that this Labor Government has promised this Territory. If this response by the Minister in this case was another instance of an attempt not to address the question but rather to evade it, then of course the Minister's action is reprehensible and he should be held to account for it.
So I think that, while a censure motion itself is a landmark in the development of this institution, we have to treat it with some caution and we have to ask ourselves whether there are not other ways of resolving the tensions and the differences between us, the members of the Assembly, on the floor of the house, and whether this kind of act is necessarily in the best interests of this Assembly and of the community we were elected to serve.
Mr Speaker, I will be most interested in the debate. I will certainly be interested in the outcome. I hope that it is somewhat of a sobering lesson for all of us, not just the two people that are involved in this. We have a responsibility; we were not elected by the community frivolously; and we should not take our job frivolously. We should be careful to serve the public interest in what we say and what we do. While we have to recognise that we are human beings, we are fallible and we will from time to time make mistakes and do things that perhaps it would have been better not to have done, the bottom line is our responsibility to serve that community. We have to decide whether this is really the way to address problems and resolve them.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister) (3.31): Mr Speaker, I think in many ways it is a bit unfortunate that this rather unedifying debate has been continued, but it does at least give us an opportunity, as Mr Kaine has pointed out, to reflect a little bit on the standards of behaviour of Assembly members and the kinds of standards that I believe the community would expect us to adhere to.
I believe, Mr Speaker, that I gave a factual explanation after question time today of the events that flowed from Mr Jensen's question in the Assembly yesterday. But I do think that we must also bear in mind that, in asking his question yesterday, Mr Jensen made a very clear implication that there had been political interference in the request
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