Page 2189 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 6 June 1990
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Suspension of Standing and Temporary Orders
MR KAINE (Chief Minister) (3.27): I move:
That so much of the standing and temporary orders be suspended as would prevent Mr Kaine making a ministerial statement on the draft Land Use (Approvals and Orders) Bill 1990.
Mr Speaker, I must say that I am getting heartily sick of the hypocrisy of this Opposition which talks about courtesy and yet every time I, as Chief Minister, seek to make a ministerial statement - and this one happens to be about our land management package - I am refused leave. I know of no other parliament in the Westminster system where the Prime Minister, the Premier, or the Chief Minister, seeking leave from the house to make a statement, is ever refused. I again seek leave to make the statement.
Mr Berry: In other parliaments they always give notice.
MR KAINE: You never gave us notice. I submit that, when these people have the hypocrisy to talk about courtesy, they should look at their own performance and nobody else's.
MR BERRY (3.29): The Chief Minister does not understand the rules. It is most inappropriate to seek leave to do something in the course of debate. Mr Speaker, the last time we spoke on the same subject, I made it very clear that the Labor Opposition is quite happy to grant leave for Ministers to make ministerial statements provided that the Government observes parliamentary practice as it occurs in other places and gives at least two hours' notice in order to give the Opposition a chance, if it so wishes, to respond immediately to any motions that are put, arising from ministerial statements. I asked the manager of Government business this morning to find out the subject matter of ministerial statements for today, and she said she would try to do so. Mrs Nolan came to me five or 10 minutes before the Chief Minister sought leave and advised me that the statement was in relation to planning - no more than that.
I make it clear again to the Chief Minister that it is not good enough just to pay lip-service to giving notice to the Opposition. We are serious about this matter. We intend to pursue it, in order to get common courtesy from the Government. If the present Government was too slow to pick up on this issue when it was in opposition, that is just too bad for it. We know that it was a bit hopeless and it needed featherbedding quite often. But now there is a real Opposition and we expect the common courtesy that applies in other parliamentary places.
If the Government cannot live up to the ordinarily accepted standards and the common decencies of other places - I know it might be difficult for the Chief Minister - then it will
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