Page 389 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 21 February 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
means, should and will be given an opportunity to comment on the result of that process, which is a process of government.
I was interested to hear the former Chief Minister say that when the Opposition was in government it was looking at a working party. That was its approach to everything - form a working party, form a consultative committee, talk about it, but do not do anything. The former Government did nothing about this, just as it did nothing about a lot of other issues.
To take up Mr Whalan's point, yes, he certainly did talk to me, but he talked to me in terms of a working party, not a select committee. How is it that in such a short time this matter has achieved such eminence that now, according to the Opposition, it must be done by a select committee of the Assembly? That is not what Mr Whalan put to me. At no time did he ever suggest such a possibility. He talked about a working party.
The other aspect of my objection to this proposal is whether this is a question of timing. The previous Government did nothing on the issue, even though it well knew that we would be obliged to take over the responsibility for the police by the middle of this year. Yet in seven months it did nothing. We have now taken over the reins of government and, essentially, we have four months left in which to resolve this issue of how we are going to take over the policing functions from the Commonwealth.
There is not time, even if it were appropriate, to get a select committee of the Assembly involved in that. We have our negotiation arrangements in place, they are proceeding. We will come to an agreement with the Commonwealth as to the best way to handle this problem and, as I said, when we come to that conclusion, we will inform the Assembly. And it is simply quite improper for the Leader of the Opposition and the former Chief Minister to suggest that we should develop these things in the public forum. There are matters of sensitivity there, financial and otherwise, and the former Government did not and we do not develop policy on these issues by public debate and in the public forum. That is not where we resolve issues of sensitivity. We are getting on with the business. We will come to a conclusion; we will tell the Opposition about it.
Mr Collaery has gone to great pains to point out carefully and systematically that there are no possibilities open to us at present other than to accept the continuation of policing by the Australian Federal Police. No other options can be pursued in the time that we have available to us. On the other hand, in the longer term, once we have a suitable arrangement in place with the Australian Federal Police, we can look at other options for the longer term, perhaps even the re-establishment of our own police force at some time in the future if we believe that we can afford
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .