Page 2435 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 7 August 1990
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MR ACTING SPEAKER: I think we are probably just sitting around and chatting, Chief Minister.
MR KAINE: I seek a ruling from you.
MR ACTING SPEAKER: I will now make a ruling and let us get back to it. The ruling is that the motion is completely in order and accordingly, if the Assembly wishes to debate the motion, let us get on with the debate. I rule the motion in order.
MR KAINE: I am attempting to debate it but what I am discovering is that I am carrying on a conversation with eight people.
Mr Wood: You said, "Let me ask a question".
MR KAINE: Yes, but I wanted a response from you, Mr Acting Speaker, not from Mr Wood or Mr Moore and everybody else sitting over there.
MR ACTING SPEAKER: The motion is in order; let us get on with the debate.
MR KAINE: I am not complaining about you, Bill; I am just complaining about the other seven.
It is a very interesting question as to whether or not leave is required in this case. Perhaps rather than asking where is the Speaker and by what authority is he someplace else, the question that you ought to be asking is whether he needs the authority or the approval of leave by this Assembly to be where he is. I would very much question whether leave is required in the first place. I would submit that what the Deputy Leader of the Government has done is to seek to rectify what the Opposition saw as an omission in order to satisfy its members in a formal way. However, instead of them acceding to the request and accepting the fact that the Speaker is absent legitimately and in a pro forma way endorsing his absence, we find ourselves in this curious debate about whether we will give him leave to be absent. I doubt that it is precedented that any member of any legislature in Australia, having sought leave to be absent for whatever reason, has ever been refused it.
What are we engaging in this debate for? Are we, I presume, trying to make some sort of political point again? It is not a question of whether the Speaker ought to be absent or whether he is entitled to be absent or whether members of the Assembly knew of his intention because it had been discussed in the procedures committee. That all seems to have been set aside. Now we are on this chase to nail somebody to the wall. In this case it happens to be the Speaker. I find it rather bizarre that we are debating this matter at all. I would have thought that if a member sought leave to be absent, the Assembly would automatically
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