Page 3129 - Week 15 - Thursday, 14 December 1989
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MR SPEAKER: Let me clear up a point on Christian names. If the surname is also used in conjunction with it, I believe that is quite proper.
MR WHALAN: What happened was that Robyn Nolan, who is the whip for the Government, thrice refused my request. I asked, "Can you confirm that there will be a question time tomorrow?". She said, "I cannot". So we were left in the dark. I said, "Well, in other words, there will not be a question time?", and she said, "No, I can't say that either". So we are being kept in the dark; we are being denied information which as an opposition we are entitled to have. We are entitled to know whether we are going to have the opportunity to raise our matter of public importance, but, no, we have been denied that as well.
So what is this Government on about when it denies the right to members to suspend standing orders? Let us look at how this standing order was introduced. The original draft standing orders which this Assembly inherited were presented to us as a fait accompli and, of course, it was always the right of the Assembly to modify those standing orders. The original standing orders that we were presented with provided that a suspension of standing orders could only be moved by a Minister. We believed that that was unduly constraining on the rights of all members of the Assembly and we supported - wholeheartedly supported - the amendment of the standing orders to provide for every member of the Assembly to have the right to suspend standing orders.
Mr Jensen: Who moved the amendment, Mr Whalan?
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR WHALAN: That is the current right. Every member can have the right to suspend standing orders, but now that right is being taken away; that right is being denied to us.
Mrs Grassby: I seek an extension of time for Mr Whalan.
Leave not granted.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (10.39): Mr Speaker, I want to speak very briefly. I will not take more than four or five minutes on this. I find the complaints of the opposition quite extraordinary, given their behaviour on this day last week. They came into this Assembly, on the first day of sitting of the new Government - a government which had been duly elected by a majority of members of this Assembly - and they ensured that the best thing that could happen on that day was that the Assembly became an object of ridicule in our community and indeed in wider Australia. That was their contribution to the democracy of the ACT. I was ashamed of their behaviour on that day, and I fully support the motion moved by Mr Jensen to ensure that the Assembly today does not
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