Page 1369 - Week 07 - Thursday, 24 August 1989
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Mr Stevenson: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. The level of debate in this house is, unfortunately, sinking rapidly with remarks such as that.
MR SPEAKER: I accept the point of order, Mr Stevenson. Members should be able to expect some respect to be shown to them during debate. Please withdraw that last comment, Mr Duby, and proceed on a more respectful level.
MR DUBY: I withdraw the comment and any implication that it had, but God knows, when the day does come that a government is formed, what ministry will he have? What ministry will Dennis Stevenson demand out of the - - -
Ms Maher: He will be able to get what he demands; that is for sure.
MR DUBY: Yes, that is right. It is fairly apparent what is happening here. You in the Liberal Party and the Residents Rally party are holding and kowtowing to the wishes of the Abolish Self Government Coalition for no other reason than that you are afraid; you are dead scared that one day you might need him, that one day you will need him for that vote.
Mr Kaine: We might need you, too.
MR DUBY: Well, I have got news for you, Trevor. All I can say is that I would urge people to reconsider, firstly, on the issue of consultants. On that consultancy matter I have had discussions with Secretariat staff and am now of the opinion that if we need to utilise that third position, which is what we had - we saved it as an ASL number of dollars - the way to do it is to put people on staff, and there are no problems. We have no intention of hiring a consultancy in that fashion.
I do not know, I just do not understand the whole purpose of this debate. I just cannot understand what you are possibly trying to get at. Whilst I can well understand the concept of maybe kicking more dollars into the till, this idea of suddenly amending this thing so that everybody has got open slather on the public purse in improper matters of consultancies is beyond me.
MR COLLAERY (4.15): Mr Speaker, I like a good stir. If ever there was a subject where we should have behaved with the utmost propriety, it was this subject because we are all brought into disrepute. I was pained to hear a lot of the language, personally, because even from a point of good sense it was not appropriate for the debate to go this way. Mr Speaker, this debate is about equity in the system. Mr Kaine said it at the beginning. The numbers were clear at the beginning. That should have been enough.
Instead, we have gone into hyperbole and a personal attack on Mr Stevenson. "Back pocket deals", I heard; "avoidance", "blackmail", "rorts"; "this", which is
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