Page 1957 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 24 October 1989
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occasions when, with the agreement of the members opposite, there have been Bills brought forward in an earlier time frame. The position is that, unless we have the agreement of the parties, it is necessary to move urgency in order to have legislation proceeded with on the same day.
Reference has been made to some press statements which have been made by Mr Humphries in relation to the optometrists Bill. I would like to use the optometrists Bill as an example of a piece of legislation which has been the subject of some discussion between the Government and the opposition parties. The optometrists Bill was introduced on 28 September 1989, and there were perceived to be some difficulties with that legislation. I must say that, as leader of government business in the house, I was approached by several members, indicating that they had difficulties with that legislation at the beginning of last week.
In the Monday briefings, at the beginning of last week, I said to all of those members, "Look, if we've got problems, why don't we drop it to the bottom of the list, which will mean that effectively it will not come up for the next couple of weeks at least?". So, by agreement, it was dropped to the bottom of the list, and we invited each of those people who objected to contact Mr Berry and to discuss with Mr Berry the difficulties that they had.
This was the process which was adopted in relation to this piece of legislation. If you look at other pieces of legislation in that same group - and there was a group of items of legislation, all of which were introduced on 28 September 1989 - and you look at today's date, 24 October, you will see that there has been a very considerable time span within which members opposite have had the opportunity to examine the legislation and to consult with groups outside the Assembly, which is what I would expect to be the normal practice. If there is legislation in relation to optometrists I would expect members opposite to contact some optometrists or the optometrists association and seek their views on the legislation. That would be a normal process.
But in addition to that, Mr Speaker, the Chief Minister wrote to every individual member of the Assembly and invited any member of the Assembly in relation to any item of the legislation in the program to contact her office and she would arrange a briefing in relation to any item of legislation. I do not know how many members took up that invitation.
I know that various of our ministerial colleagues from time to time, when an item of legislation has been introduced, will provide specific briefing opportunities for members to consider the legislation before it is introduced into the chamber. So what has quite clearly happened, Mr Speaker, is that, notwithstanding these opportunities and notwithstanding the efforts made by the Government to try
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