Page 1690 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 May 1990
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needs to be addressed. The real test for the Government is whether or not it will support a motion which ends up in the censure motion that I propose to put before this house for in-depth debate.
Mr Kaine: Just propose it and you will get it - - -
MR BERRY: I have proposed it.
Mr Kaine: But not by suspension of standing orders.
MR COLLAERY (Deputy Chief Minister) (4.57): In responding to this motion to suspend standing orders, I would like to put it on record that the Government will grant leave for Mr Berry to move his censure motion against Mr Duby. Mr Speaker, it has taken us a while to work out what is going on, but it is clear that the Opposition are divided on this issue. They wanted us to fall for some tactic to prevent the motion coming on. We have not. We have put the economic restructuring of the Territory to the people. We are now willing to hear your motion, Mr Berry.
It is very significant that the Labor Party does not want to work within the rules. Its members want to suspend standing orders. They have got some machination or other that they have worked out in that room down at the end there where they work. They have this notion that they are going to secure some advantage out of it and probably do a filibuster, further waste public moneys and the time of this Assembly with this motion.
I submit that if they do wish to bring this motion on, mistaken though it is, they do so now at the first available opportunity, as they argued earlier, so that we may hear whether this motion has any substance to it.
MR CONNOLLY (4.58): Mr Speaker, standing orders should have been suspended to allow us to move this motion of censure at 3.00 pm today, as we have said repeatedly. There was - - -
Mr Jensen: Read page 346 of House of Representatives Practice.
MR CONNOLLY: I am very grateful to Mr Jensen for that intervention because I was about to direct him to that very page. There was much hilarity from the members opposite and reference to "one who should be wearing L-plates" because they thought they had caught us out. They thought that we had been suggesting that standing orders require precedence to be given to a motion of censure. That was not, and never would have been, our point. Our point was that the practice is for a government to take a motion of censure straightaway. Mr Jensen says, "Read 346", where it is said:
After notice of a motion has been given, it is often the practice for the Government to suspend standing orders to enable the motion to be moved forthwith.
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