Page 3082 - Week 14 - Thursday, 7 December 1989
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MR WHALAN: No, I am establishing the urgency of this matter. The fact has to be stated so that you can understand the urgency. I am just stating the fact first, and then I will relate that to the urgency and the need for the suspension. I appreciate your support in relation to that matter.
Mr Speaker, I have had the opportunity to listen to a tape of a press conference which was conducted by Mr Kaine immediately after the sitting of the Assembly on Tuesday when the then opposition successfully moved their motion of no confidence in Rosemary Follett. In that tape, part of which was reported in the Canberra Times of Wednesday, 6 December, Mr Kaine was questioned again and again by members of the press gallery on this particular issue of an approach being made to you in relation to Mr Collaery and Mr Kaine.
I do not wish to replay the whole tape but, if members of the Assembly wish it, with the leave of the Assembly, I am in a position to replay the whole tape of that interview with Mr Kaine. Mr Collaery does not seem to believe that Mr Kaine would have made this statement. The Canberra Times quite categorically stated when it accurately reported Mr Kaine's remarks:
Outside the Assembly yesterday, Mr Kaine said, "I am in no way involved in the events or the allegations ... I have no personal knowledge of it".
Mr Speaker and members of the Assembly, what this quite clearly shows is that either Mr Collaery is mendacious or Mr Kaine is mendacious. I personally prefer the word of Mr Kaine, and it is for that reason - - -
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Whalan, you are making assumptions in the debate. You are really debating the issue now. I would suggest to you that we are looking to the suspension of standing orders rather than the major debate.
MR WHALAN: Yes, you are quite right, Mr Speaker, and I do apologise. I will stick to the suspension. It is this question of establishing the urgency of debating this. In these very first moments of this new Government in the ACT, we have to establish once and for all whether it is a government which can be trusted by the community of the ACT. Is it a government that can be trusted or is it a government that cannot be trusted? I put it to you, Mr Speaker, that that is why the urgency is so great, that it is so important that we have this opportunity to pursue this particular matter at this time.
MR WOOD (10.37): Mr Speaker, I rise to support Mr Whalan. My argument in support of the suspension of standing orders is based on the priority that ought to be given to censure motions. In the Westminster system, a motion of censure, quite properly, is treated as a matter of great importance.
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