Page 1728 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 May 1990
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an honesty offence. It was more likely regarded as simply a drunkenness offence rather than what has come to be the realisation of the authorities these days. Mr Collaery tried to mislead this house by using dead references. A Minister of the Crown is expected to meet a higher standard, a point which Mr Duby failed to observe. Refusing a breath test does not go to an honesty issue, but it is a very serious matter.
Mr Speaker, I would like to refer now to some of the comments made by Mr Duby. It seems to me that he missed the point completely when he was referring to the issue concerning the taxi driver. It was not the merits of the taxi driver's case that people were talking about; the issue was about Mr Duby's dealing with it. The Canberra Times stated that it is impossible for people to accept the legitimacy of decisions connected in any way with drink-driving which are made by an administration headed by Mr Duby. Do you get the point yet?
Mr Duby: The decisions were made long before I was there.
MR BERRY: The point that people are trying to make up out of the facts, Mr Duby, is that you should not be heading an administration which deals with issues in relation to driving motor cars or road safety. It is absolutely outrageous, and you should resign.
One of the things that I found most interesting in your explanation of events was how much more it damned you. You would have been better off sitting down and shutting up because you were at least in front from that point of view. You do not even seem to see how serious this issue is in terms of the provision of safe roads in this Territory and in terms of law observance in relation to drink-driving offences in this Territory. You do not even see how serious it is, for heaven's sake.
In a country where thousands of people are killed each year, and many more thousands are injured, at a cost of billions of dollars to the community, we have a government which has supported a person in the ministry - they all seem to agree to sit with him - who has committed a serious offence in relation to an area of his portfolio in which he has to make important decisions, and the community has to have some respect for those decisions. How can it, for heaven's sake, in these circumstances?
Mr Speaker, I would like also to refer to Mr Humphries' speech very briefly. He has developed a bit of a reputation because he does not know anything about the cost of education and he cannot add up the figures in relation to health. It is hardly likely that he will ever earn any credibility about his opinions in relation to such important matters as ministerial propriety, in the knowledge that his mathematics are so poor that the sorts of figures that he would have to add would be rather simple. All he has to do is focus his mind on propriety for Ministers, but he does not seem to be able to do that.
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