Page 815 - Week 03 - Thursday, 22 March 1990
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The fact that Mr Whalan forgot to nod as he walked to his table here, apologised and then nodded, gave Mr Collaery the opportunity to vent his spleen further in relation to Mr Whalan's exposure of his inadequacies. I think that the Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Collaery, should have a bit of difficulty sleeping tonight, because of his conscience. Certainly the preparation of important Bills like those relating to human rights would not cause him to lose any sleep. The outrageous decision of this Assembly to throw out Mr Whalan could have been prevented if Mr Collaery had had some good sense and grace and had not been driven by anger and retribution. That is typical of the person opposite, and typical of his whole approach to dealing with matters in this Assembly.
MR KAINE (Chief Minister) (6.57): Mr Speaker, I rarely speak on the adjournment motion because I believe - - -
Mr Berry: Well, why break the habit?
MR KAINE: That is a typical flip remark from Mr Berry. He does not want to engage in any real debate, he just wants to be - well, I will not use the word because it is pretty unpleasant. I do not usually speak on the adjournment motion because at the end of a long hard day, I always take the view that people are pretty tired. They sometimes say things that they later regret and they sometimes make foolish statements like that which Mr Berry just made. We would all be better off going home and relaxing for an hour or two instead of engaging in further prolongation of sometimes pointless debate.
However, Mr Berry has caused me to get to my feet because his spurious claim for the laurels of victory in the debate today simply cannot be left on the record. Obviously, he has not been taking any notice of what went on at all and I would just recapitulate. The motion put forward, which was supposed to put Mr Collaery on the defensive, in fact ended up with three members of the Labor Party - three former Labor Ministers - being condemned by this Assembly. Is that a victory? Not in my book. They were shown up to be guilty of reprehensible behaviour - absolutely reprehensible behaviour. If they call that a victory, they have a funny scorebook.
The Opposition's matter of public importance was really intended to take another blow at the Attorney-General. The whole purpose of today's work on the part of Labor Party members was to get Mr Collaery. Well, they did not succeed; they did not make a point worth a darn. As I have been saying all week, they are a bunch of political cream puffs. The Leader of the Opposition, who is never here when the real debate is on, is, of course, not here again and I would suspect that if somebody actually noted down the amount of time that she spent in this house, that person would come to an unpleasant conclusion, because she is here very rarely.
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