Page 1870 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 May 1990
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MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General) (4.14): I think we need to get back to the Supply Bill and look at some alternatives, Mr Speaker. What would this crowd opposite us achieve were they armed with this Supply Bill? I just wonder. Looking at them sometimes, I wonder where they get their inspiration. I know Mr Berry has to look down from a great height, and Mr Moore is caught in that fog that usually surrounds his intellectual processes. But I ask the Canberra people: would this crowd make a credible alternative? Where would they be moving from?
Recently, Mr Speaker, at a seminar at the University of Canberra, I heard their leader - and I include the limpet in this - say that Canberra should be sovietised, that we should form little communes and committees all over the place and, by this magical process that got going in Vladivostok a few years ago, you would get a sort of consumer community cooperative going and Canberra would run much more smoothly and consultatively.
This extraordinary trip into political science 1 by the Leader of the Opposition was a real eye-opener to me. Perish the thought that we nearly allowed Ms Follett to get her agenda going. Mr Berry, from the firemen's union, is a skilled dealer on the floor in tactics and games of that nature. We see it here today. We see those divisive types of tactics.
I would like to turn this discussion to what this crowd would do with supply. We have seen what their political masters on the hill have done with it. While the mortgage belt is suffering and the Salvation Army is giving out more and more food parcels every month, we have seen the Labor Prime Minister continue, through his Treasurer, an interest rate policy that few in this country can abide by. We have seen that Government give millions and millions and millions away to the airlines to adjust problems that they had. We saw millions given to Kodak to retain its factory in Victoria. Did we see a social balancing equation there? Was that budget driven? Was this not a pragmatic political decision by the ALP bunch who run our country from up on the hill? What did they do when that trial was aborted in Sydney recently? That went under the carpet. There was a little rap on the knuckles, and it all went away.
We have all this moral outrage in hypocrisy that we have been hearing in the last few days, and the terribly divisive tactics being employed by the party and its limpet around the town on the so-called school closure issue. As the Chief Minister said, a suggested criterion was issued for discussion, and the Labor Party, with Mr Moore, fell upon it with glee, because here was a chance to score some quick points.
But if we gave them supply today, what would they do? I am sure tonight they would get up there in that room in the biggest bunk you have ever imagined and they would not know
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