Page 2962 - Week 13 - Thursday, 23 November 1989
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this Assembly. We need a government in this Territory which is able to command the respect of this Assembly to get a program which is going to deal with the problems of this Territory - not put them to one side, not leave them on the shelf, not deal with them in the indecisive fashion that we have seen from this Government. We need to shift strongly, and it can come from somewhere on this side of the chamber.
Confidence in Government
MR BERRY (Minister for Community Services and Health) (5.08): It is very interesting to sit on this side of the house and listen to the cockies on the fence over there sniping at the Government about the way that it handles matters. It is very interesting, Mr Speaker, if we compare their words with their actions in the last couple of days about the Government's budget. What a bunch of losers!
First of all we heard from Mr Stefaniak. He attacked the women, absolutely attacked the women, and tried to extract $250,000 out of the budget in an attack on women's issues. Now that is, of course, consistent with his earlier moans when the budget was being delivered. He repeatedly moaned about the support that this Government was giving to women in its approach to its social justice commitment.
Mr Humphries, of course, is now bolting out of the chamber because he is about to hear a few things that he will not like. What about the $5m that Mr Humphries was going to suck out of the education system? Of course, he said that his motion was wrong. It was wrong all right; it stunk. Then he changed it to the health budget, and then of course he changed it to nothing at all, because he really could not make up his mind. They look like a bunch of fools, and that is precisely what they looked like in the budget debate. These are the people who are lining themselves up to take government.
I noticed from the words of Mr Kaine that he has presumed that he has the numbers. I suspect that that includes Mr Stevenson and Mr Speaker. I would be very interested to know of any commitments that have been made in that regard. Those sorts of presumptuous statements demonstrate the arrogance of the Liberals with their "born to rule" mentality.
Another thing I should add is that I am not quite sure that the Liberals will be able to maintain the pace - in particular, their leader. I think he has treated his whole period in opposition as a bit of a holiday, and from my knowledge of what is required of Ministers I think the pressure would be too great, let alone that which is required of the Chief Minister. So I think Mr Kaine is probably hoping that he will not get the job because he is getting it pretty easy where he is. If his performance in
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