Page 3014 - Week 10 - Thursday, 16 August 1990
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fifth ministry, surely you would have something on paper to show us on this item alone how you can justify the claim that there will be no increase in costs. You have no credibility in this chamber, as it is, on matters affecting costing. Let us see you put something on the table, before this debate is concluded, about how you intend there to be no extra cost. I will sit down now and I will wait most anxiously for that response.
MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General) (4.39), in reply: Except for one or two speeches - interestingly, those of Mr Stevenson, Mr Moore and Mr Wood - there was very little substance, only rhetoric, in the issues raised in this matter. It was mere rhetoric and I do not propose to respond to the rhetoric. I believe that there were significant contributions made by those three members, and let me remind the house of the final words of my speech on the motion. The final words I used the other day were:
Although this resolution will be carried, let me make it very clear that the prerogative for the appointment of Ministers and for the nature and style of those appointments lies with ... the Chief Minister. It may well be that one or two Executive Deputies are given ministerial statutory powers without increased material resources ...
I found it very churlish of those opposite to oppose those sentiments. It is well known that, as we move into the first mid-term phase of self-government, there is clearly a far more onerous workload and a far more involved number of issues that our Government is tackling. Mr Speaker, we have a major hospital redevelopment program. For better or worse, depending on the Opposition's view, we have major contentious issues in the public domain and we have a Chief Minister who is attempting to balance a most difficult budget. There are profound issues before the Government at the present time. I am not going to put my heart on my sleeve and talk about my ministries. But I did notice that the Leader of the Opposition challenged me to give some evidence. She said, "Give some evidence of what sort of workload or pressures there are on a Minister". Well there is no secret about my diary. I have asked my secretary to run off my daily diary over the periods of 12 June to 26 June and 16 July to 30 July, and you can ask for any other period you like and you will see the type of day that any of the Ministers here work. And as Michael Moore so graciously - - -
Mrs Grassby: Mr Speaker, could we ask the Minister to table that. We want him to table it.
MR COLLAERY: Mr Speaker, they would love to pore over this and know what it is about. I will table those at the end of my speech.
Mrs Grassby: Oh, good. Thank you.
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