Page 1698 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 May 1990
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MR KAINE: That is what you are doing.
Mr Connolly: He has got a criminal conviction.
MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, that man just said that Mr Duby is a criminal. He should he required to withdraw it.
MR SPEAKER: Order! He did not say that, Mr Kaine.
MR KAINE: He did. He said he was a criminal.
Mr Connolly: I said he had a criminal conviction.
MR KAINE: These are the great moralists; they are very moral. They can throw rocks, but nobody can throw them back. This will be a boomerang, as a lot of the other things that you have started have turned out to be.
Let us examine the facts, Mr Speaker. Mr Duby pleaded guilty to an offence in April. It is fair to say that at the time public and media reaction was critical, but there were no calls for his resignation, and nor were there from you lot, absolutely none. But, seven weeks later, this has suddenly become a moral issue and we now have to ask him to step down. For seven weeks there was dead silence. The Labor Party now says Mr Duby should resign. Labor members seek to justify their failure to make this point in the first place on the ground that they did not wish to seek Mr Duby's resignation while Mrs Nolan's trial was pending.
This is an equally breathtaking position and one which is absolute nonsense and which could only have been put forward by Mr Connolly. Mr Connolly as a lawyer ought to know that there is absolutely no connection whatsoever between the two cases. To argue now that they kept silent for seven weeks because some other case involving some other person was in the offing is absolutely rubbish. Mr Connolly knows it, we know it, the general public knows it and, what is more important, the legal profession in Canberra know it. They are well aware of the absolute ineptitude of Mr Connolly when it comes to the law. To put forward now that there is some link between the two cases is sheer hypocrisy - and that is the term you used, "sheer hypocrisy".
It is clear from the practice in British and Australian parliaments over the past 40 years that the resignation of a Minister can be sought only in three kinds of circumstances: where there has been a clear breach of personal propriety involving criminal activity or use of office for personal gain; where there has been a serious administrative error for which the Minister accepts personal responsibility; or where there has been a clear attempt to mislead the parliament. It is clear that none of these circumstances applies in Mr Duby's case. No-one has suggested that Mr Duby has misled the Assembly, has caused an administrative error, or has been involved in an impropriety of the kind referred to.
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