Page 774 - Week 03 - Thursday, 22 March 1990
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from Mrs Grassby. I believe the staff of the Tourist Bureau are entitled to have an apology from Mr Whalan. I believe the Chief Minister is a man of integrity and is entitled to have an apology for the slur that the poor people out there have cast upon him, that he is seen to be feathering our nest here with $250,000 worth of work in the Assembly. That article that the former Chief Minister put on us was a slur on us all, I believe. I truly believe that if it is at all possible we should start again in the next sitting with some sensible work in this Assembly.
MR MOORE (4.43): It is very ironic that Mr Collaery should sit up here holier-than-thou now and talk about undue public alarm - this coming from Mr "corruption" Collaery himself.
With reference to this amendment, because that is what I am speaking to, I find on reading the original motion that I must read the first sentence as a sentence:
That this Assembly censures the Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Collaery, for:
and after the colon are a series of qualifications. Then I look to the amendment and I see that all the words are omitted after "Assembly" and then we get in something that is totally irrelevant to censuring the Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Collaery.
When I go back to standing order 140, I read that every amendment must be relevant to the question which it is proposed to amend. So to be relevant to the question which it is proposed to amend, it must in some way deal with the censure of the Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Collaery. We do not read English by splitting up sentences. The whole notion of English is that we use punctuation to split up sentences. If you were to split the sentence at the comma after the Deputy Chief Minister there could be some argument, although there the double commas are used as a qualification. It would be far more logical to split the sentence at the colon. For that reason this particular amendment is totally unacceptable according to our standing orders. For those of you who would go to parliamentary practice, it is also irrelevant to look at that because standing order 275 provides:
Any question relating to procedure or the conduct of business of the Assembly not provided for in these standing orders or practices -
"Not provided for" - but this is provided for. Standing order 140 provides for it and provides clearly that this amendment is not acceptable, Mr Speaker. For you to rule any other way is unacceptable to me, to say the least. It is clearly from a point of logic, from a point of English - - -
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