Page 1151 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 1990
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This is quite a extraordinary claim because I could have sworn that the questions asked of Ms Follett and her fellow Ministers while she was in Government were often dorothy dixers too. I cannot discern any significant difference between practice under her Government and the practice under ours except, of course, that there are more of us than there were of her and her party.
Mr Stefaniak: We ask better questions too, Gary.
Mr Jensen: Shorter answers.
Mrs Grassby: You have got to be joking.
MR HUMPHRIES: Yes, it is true that there are many changes in the way in which answers are provided. She complains about the length and the quality of answers. I cannot discern any difference between those offered by us and those offered by her Ministers. I do know, however, that very few questions have been taken on notice so far by this ministry. I think a far higher proportion of questions was taken on notice by the previous ministry.
Ms Follett also raised the question of lack of business. She said that the Government has an obvious lack of business and this is a terrible affront to the Assembly et cetera. I have collected some figures on the volume of legislation and the rapidity of legislation tendered by this Government compared with that by the previous Government. I see that the first Bill passed by the Follett Government was passed on the seventh sitting day of the Follett Government. How does that compare with the Kaine Government?
It happens that the first Bill passed by the Kaine Government was passed on the sixth sitting day. Similarly, the second Bill was passed on the sixth sitting day.
Mrs Grassby: It was our Bill.
MR HUMPHRIES: I am glad you raised that point, Mrs Grassby; I will come back to that in a moment. The third Bill of the Kaine Government was passed on its sixth sitting day. The third Bill of the Follett Government was passed on its eighth sitting day - and so on. We have not had all the figures in yet, but when they come in they will be interesting. So much for the argument that the Kaine Government is somehow slow in producing legislation.
Mrs Grassby says "This was our Bill". I wonder whose the first, second and third Bills of the Follett Government were. They were certainly not drafted in full by the Follett Government; they were obviously Bills prepared by her predecessors and that is obviously the case here too. I think that we had better be consistent about this and accept that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
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