Page 1258 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 23 August 1989
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MR HUMPHRIES: Knowing that the fictitious Mr Bloggs has no right of redress and cannot even write back to the newspaper and criticise the bona fides of the Minister or the person concerned because that person in making those counterallegations has no protection, unlike the person making the original allegation. So, for those reasons, Mr Speaker, we should treat the capacity to make such statements with great care and caution.
I believe we ought to withdraw from extreme positions of the kind that have been adopted previously. I hope this motion, in its amended form, will teach prudence to all parties, and I hope that as a result of this experience we can be a little bit more careful and we can move more quickly and readily to addressing the proper issues of concern to the Territory and to its citizens and avoid peripheral personal issues of the kind that has given rise to this motion.
MR MOORE (4.10): I would just like to take issue with some of the points that Mr Whalan raised, supposedly in response to this debate, but I believe that they were not done as such. He attacked first of all the Residents Rally on its lack of coherent policies. I would like to point out to the Minister that we follow directly our policies. I am sure he has a copy. I will certainly be delighted to provide him with a copy if he has lost it.
They are summary policies. We have further policies on planning, health and, in particular, as I have mentioned on a number of occasions, there is the 17-page document on environment. The Labor Party has perhaps relied heavily on the same sources to get a competent environment policy - its two-page or four-page environment policy or whatever it is.
With reference to the leadership crisis meeting on 19 July that he mentioned for the Residents Rally, he talked about a secret meeting. Of course, the statement is obviously circular: if it is a secret meeting, how did he know about it?
Mr Whalan: It was held at Dickson.
MR MOORE: Now, that is interesting, is it not?
Mr Whalan: I can give you an exact address.
MR MOORE: Perhaps I could just explain to Mr Whalan that it takes more than three people to roll a leader in the Residents Rally. In fact it takes a full meeting of all members in the Assembly and all members of the executive. So I doubt that two people or even three could constitute anything in the way of a leadership crisis. He has also suggested that this is a minor matter. To suggest that misleading the house in any way is a minor matter, I think, speaks for itself.
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