Page 3027 - Week 10 - Thursday, 16 August 1990
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these instances you have flown in the face of parliamentary tradition; you have flown in the face of parliamentary democracy. You stand condemned for this, but even more I think you are guilty of reprehensible behaviour in this Assembly.
Assembly Business
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (5.28): Mr Speaker, I wish to traverse only one issue that Ms Follett has raised - and I note that she is leaving the chamber. Apparently this is not palatable but this is a point that was lost in the barrage of points of order and objections yesterday when I raised the issue in the course of debate. I will raise it again since she has raised it again. Section 65 of the self-government Act is a shield behind which governments may hide. Let us face it, it is a protection to governments that allows them not to have to face some money Bills. Whether that is fairly put there or not, I make no comment on; but for Ms Follett to lecture the Government for using section 65 is grossly hypocritical when Ms Follett herself used section 65 when in government to prevent debate on private members' business. It is grossly hypocritical. I would accept the lecture we have just received from Ms Follett a little more easily if I knew that she would apply those same principles to herself when she is next in government. However, on the performance when she was last in government I have no confidence that this will be the case.
Assembly Business
MR CONNOLLY (5.30): Mr Speaker, the points that our leader, Ms Follett, made in the adjournment debate are serious points indeed, and it is unfortunate that they receive merely a partisan response. What seems to be happening in this chamber is that the Executive Government has the parliamentary representatives by the scruff of the neck. The non-Executive members are not prepared on any occasion to stand up and assert their rights as parliamentarians, as opposed to partisan members of a party. This is, as our leader has said, a very sad state of affairs.
Mr Speaker, the only other point I would like to make in the adjournment debate is, as Ms Follett remarked, that throughout the censure motion, which should have been responded to with reasoned arguments in support of the Government's position, we heard merely a diatribe against the Australian Labor Party, of which we are all proud to be members.
Mr Jensen has a habit in the adjournment debate of getting up and reminding the members of significant historical
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