Page 3225 - Week 11 - Thursday, 13 September 1990
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withdrawn, or to proceed to a vote on the motion. I make clear to the house and for the record that the basis for this is not convoluted; it is parliamentary practice.
Yesterday I went to the Federal Parliament at lunchtime and I had the advantage of sitting with the Federal Attorney-General and the Opposition shadow Attorney-General in a situation that made me realise that this Assembly has a long way to go before we will get the full and complete respect of the ACT public. One of the principal reasons why we are not earning that at the moment is the performance of the Opposition here. Knowing full well that I had followed your ruling and that I had sat down, without trying to take any point from your ruling, Ms Follett got up and attacked me in a manner that would have been slanderous and defamatory outside the house - she would not have been game to say it outside the house. She then proceeded to make what is typical of her personality these days, namely, a very strong, snide, personal attack on me. And then she left the chamber again.
This is the flavour of the manner in which members of the Opposition are proceeding in opposition. We see their magazines they issue, their Insider - scurrilous documents. I say through you, Mr Speaker, to the Opposition: you lower the concept of self-government every day longer that some of you sit in this house. You should go back to your jobs - not that many of you had a job - if you cannot try to elevate self-government in the chamber.
Mr Speaker, the fact of the matter is that section 65 - - -
Mrs Grassby: He gets really upset, doesn't he? Bernard earned only $3,000. Anybody who earns only $3,000 does not have a job.
MR COLLAERY: And that, I might add, Mrs Grassby, is because of the type of work I did in the field of human rights, but we will not go into that.
Mr Speaker, the Act is very clear, as the Chief Minister said. It allows of several interpretations, as Mr Connolly seeks to argue. I do not support his arguments. I do not support the notion that an Attorney and a shadow Attorney should engage in dry legal discourse across this chamber on points of legal interpretation, other than to say that I do not support his interpretations, particularly that courts always read down statutory enactments when the result would be an absurdity. I practised for years in the courts - unlike Mr Connolly - and I am not aware of that ruling and I dare say that Professor Pearce would not agree with that simplistic notion, either. Professor Pearce is the co-author of a leading Australian text on statutory interpretation.
The situation for the Government is that the Federal Labor Government, for reasons best known to itself, has clearly given drafting instructions and passed a provision that
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