Page 3013 - Week 10 - Thursday, 16 August 1990
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others. Think about that. It may be, Mr Collaery, that my colleagues here were more capable of coping with the stresses and the strains than members on your side.
Mr Kaine: You do not sound very sincere, Bill.
MR WOOD: I am very sincere. I saw them operating; I saw them working long hours and hard. But I never saw them under the apparent stress of having to say, "Gosh, we need somebody else". You know that is not the case.
Mr Kaine: But even if you had the opportunity you did not have the members to appoint, you see, Bill - except you.
MR WOOD: That is not the case. You have come here with an argument that you cannot sustain, because you have two contradictory arguments. You are saying on the one hand that you had an agreement before you came into government that you needed a fifth ministry, that you had to have that fifth ministry, before you had experienced it, before you knew about it. Now that you are there, you suddenly seem to want to mount an argument that says, "We have to have the fifth ministry; the workload is too great". There is no basis in that. There was an agreement; there was a backroom deal to have that fifth ministry and now you want it. The workload, or the supposed workload, has nothing at all to do with that.
But then let us follow the next step. Are we to have a fifth ministry? Are we also to have a sixth ministry? It is a question that has not been debated seriously today by members on that side of the house. I would have expected the person who led off the debate, Mr Collaery, to stand up and say "We will have a fifth ministry only". Perhaps he will say, when he replies and closes the debate, "We will have a fifth ministry. We do not want a sixth ministry. That is some years down the track". Will he do that? Will he assure us that there will be no sixth ministry?
I want to support the remarks that my colleague Mrs Grassby made about costs. It seems that there is some agreement on that side of the house that this is not going to cost any more. I do not know whether that means that Mr Jensen, Mr Prowse, Mr Stefaniak, Ms Maher, or anybody who wants to be a candidate for the position, has signed away any salary increase and will reject the Remuneration Tribunal's extra $15,000 or whatever it is. Have they signed that away, or do you pool your salaries and make it up to the successful candidate? You have not justified your arguments. If you claim that there is no additional cost, tell us how that is going to be achieved.
It is the education debate all over again. Mr Humphries has told us that closing schools will save us money but he has not demonstrated that. Today, this proposal is not going to cost us money, so it is said; but it has not been demonstrated. Now if you were serious about your arguments, if you had any real concern for the need for a
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