Page 138 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 14 February 1990
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Mr Jensen: It is not even signed.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Please address the motion.
Mr Whalan: On a point of order; in the absence of government business on the business paper - - -
MR SPEAKER: Please proceed, Mr Berry. Speak to the motion before the house.
MR BERRY: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Yes, indeed I will, Mr Speaker, because it is important that we focus on the real - - -
Mrs Grassby: It might be best to do it for me because I wouldn't do it very well under the Greiner Government. It would be terrible under the Greiner Government.
MR SPEAKER: Order, order! Mrs Grassby, he does not speak loudly. I cannot hear Mr Berry.
MR BERRY: It is important that we focus on the reason that we can use the extra question time, and of course that is that there is no government business, despite the fact that the Government has done a bit of window-dressing with its 111 pieces of proposed legislation. I suspect that it has grabbed about every piece of legislation because it can now manipulate access to the drafting counsel so that nobody else can get private members' business up. That is what this is all about. Let us not kid ourselves.
I think it is most important, Mr Speaker, that the people of Canberra understand what this Government is about. It is about closed government. It is about going into the bunkers and making sure that people cannot see that it is not producing what it was elected to do. Mr Speaker, when you have a look around at these people opposite, it is the case that not one of them is performing under the policies for which they were elected. All of them have been compromising one way or another. I add to that the laziness of the Government in not being able to put up Government business and deal with it in a way that it is supposed to be dealt with, as flagged by its 111 pieces of legislation. It is an absolute disgrace and something that the people of Canberra will not forget quickly.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Moore?
Mr Moore: In the interests of an alternative vote, I am quite happy to defer to Mr Humphries first, Mr Speaker.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (3.17): I find the statements made by members opposite rather hard to swallow. If they had always been in opposition in this chamber and they were setting certain standards, which the rest of us were going to have to follow, I would feel a little more humbled perhaps by the words that have been spoken by Mr Whalan and Mr Berry. But
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