Page 2404 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 7 August 1990
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MR HUMPHRIES: I will be glad to get to the point. The point is that Mrs Grassby asked me whether there is a collective responsibility of Ministers. I can say that on this side of the house Ministers share responsibility. Although of different parties, we are of one mind on almost all the issues that we discuss. As we know, we are a real team. We are a real team as opposed to those opposite who are two teams, the left team and the right team. And of course - - -
Ms Follett: What about Bill?
MR HUMPHRIES: We have certain hangovers from that number and one unfortunately is Mr Wood. However, Mr Acting Speaker, to answer Mrs Grassby's question, we will and we do take responsibility jointly for our decisions, as I am sure you and your colleagues in the right took responsibility for decisions that the right made.
MRS GRASSBY: You do take responsibility; good, I got an answer. Now I will give you the supplementary question. Do you agree with the published statements by Messrs Duby and Collaery that - and I quote - "We beat the bureaucrats"? Is this a responsible statement to make, and have you reprimanded them or apologised to your bureaucrats?
MR HUMPHRIES: I am sure, Mr Acting Speaker, that Mrs Grassby is in constant touch with all the bureaucrats of the administration. She knows what is going on and she knows in particular what sorts of problems we have inherited from her Government that we are now trying to sort out. Those problems are the ones that we are now facing up to very fairly and squarely. The remarks that she attributes to my colleagues may or may not have been made - it is not for me to say. I think that Mrs Grassby tries to ride two horses at the one time. She tries to say that she supports Mr Duby and Mr Collaery in the responses that they expressed in the newspaper the other day, and yet she says that we should be sticking with my view, the view that she claims was expressed by me.
I think Mrs Grassby is slightly confused. I am quite confident, Mr Acting Speaker, that the expressions of different opinions which emerge from this Government's ranks are healthy, they are positive and they certainly do not result in us calling each other names of the kind we have seen in recent days in the press in describing members of the Opposition. There have been no expulsion motions moved in this Government or in these parties against their own members. I would never dream of calling one of my colleagues a Stalinist reprobate, or whatever it was. It was a very colourful expression. That does not occur in this Government, Mr Acting Speaker, and I am proud of it.
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