Page 957 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 March 1990
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Mr Collaery: That is simply not true, and it does you no credit.
MR WOOD: Will you stand up and deny that?
Mr Collaery: I will.
MR WOOD: All right. I will accept that. But Mr Collaery got to his feet very quickly in this case. In the Federal Parliament very often the Minister in charge of the House - and the same is the case in State Parliaments across the country - would stand up and make a statement along the lines of, "Well, I am sure that was done in haste. Let us think about that, Mr Speaker. Will you reconsider?" In other places that is the style of doing things. Mr Whalan rose to his feet and was warned at 8.40 pm - and I am quite concerned about the implications of the very clear time of 8.40 pm. Then, about an hour and 20 minutes later, he is very precipitously and rapidly dispensed with.
I am reassured that Mr Collaery says that this is not a plan of the Government and I think it would be appropriate for some greater consideration to be given. It has been a very steady day and I do not think anybody in this chamber should be at the end of his or her tether yet. It has been a reasonable day's proceedings, so I am at a loss to explain how or why this happened.
Mr Kaine: So are we.
MR WOOD: You are very capable of looking over and seeing what you see on this side of the house, but I suggest that you get up on the wall like a fly one day and see what happens on your side of the house. I went through the Hansard for Thursday, the day on which Mr Whalan was last removed, and I tried to trace the events of the day to see how it was that we got into such turmoil. I know the strategy, if you like, of the Labor Party and it certainly was not one of disruption or anything of that nature. Yet by the end of the day we had turmoil.
I suggest that you all read that Hansard and see where the interjections started. They started the moment Rosemary Follett got to her feet on a censure motion and they did not come from me or anybody on this side of the house. I think it was Mr Collaery who spoke next. There were no interjections from this side of the house.
Mr Humphries: There often are.
MR WOOD: I am speaking about this occasion when there was no interjection from this side of the house. Then I started to mark the interjections in different colours, Government versus Opposition, to see where the greatest anger was coming from. I suggest that Government members do the same so that they do not assume automatically that the fault lies with this side of the house.
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