Page 751 - Week 03 - Thursday, 22 March 1990
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Mr Moore: Maybe we do not trust you to give us a true answer.
MR COLLAERY: Mr Speaker, there are noises from the couch again. I am having difficulty.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Moore! Please proceed, Mr Collaery.
MR COLLAERY: I point out to members of the house that there was a consistent line of correspondence with the Government, and it has never been suggested by me at any time that Civil & Civic's approach was in any way improper or incorrect. There were no imputations regarding impropriety about anyone in this matter. Apart from that, I regarded it as quite improper to worry those aged tenants.
Mr Speaker, if you had been there on 6 March when I went to Northbourne Flats and met the people on the lawns there, and particularly one 89-year-old lady, you - and, I am sure, all members - would have shared my concern for what self-government seemed to mean for those people, particularly in the form of Mrs Grassby's media statements.
Other correspondence, all of which I propose to table now, makes it clear that Civil & Civic were seeking to identify sites of various kinds in the inner city area. Whether that correspondence was to the personal knowledge of Mrs Grassby or not does not detract from the points I have quite legitimately taken in my statement to the house, as recorded in the Hansard of 20 March 1990.
Ms Follett conveniently decided not to address an issue when she referred to the fact that I was asked a dorothy dixer and I am sure members of the media will recall my comments. On page 15 I said:
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I decided to seek this question on the floor a few minutes ago, when Mrs Grassby asked the question of Mr Kaine to get a little bit of publicity ...
If it was a dorothy dixer - and indeed it was - I simply asked Ms Maher to ask me about the Northbourne Flats. There was no typed or prepared response in my hand. I spoke to the documents available. It was as clearly of interest to the house since Mrs Grassby had, in an extraordinary fashion, attempted to divest herself of the distress she had caused those tenants by asking a question of the Chief Minister and not of myself. Of course, no-one on that side of the house wanted to ask me a question in relation to that matter.
I have had prepared for some days now this chronological listing of activity involving Northbourne Flats and we will table those documents in due course when a foreshadowed motion comes forward to deal with the reprehensible conduct of certain Opposition members. Last week we saw that
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