Page 3373 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 September 1990
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MR SPEAKER: Please seek leave to make an address to the Assembly.
MS FOLLETT: Mr Speaker, I am absolutely delighted to hear Mr Kaine refer to the Executive Deputies as a perpetuation of a myth. I could not put it better myself. What is he going to do with them on the question of the Estimates Committee? I put it to you, Mr Speaker, that what we will see from the Government is Liberal teams A, B and C taking three of the positions so that they have the numbers. They have no credibility, they have no ideology, so they are stuck with the numbers and they will use them time and time again to ensure that their view prevails in this Assembly, rather than subject themselves to an open and democratic process.
MR COLLAERY (Deputy Chief Minister) (9.33): Mr Speaker, the real issue here tonight with the Labor Party is that it believes it is born to rule. It believes it is born to rule committees; it believes it is born to rule this town. The continual lengthy debates about the fact that they have not got their way in the procedures of this Assembly really stem from the fact that this group opposite cannot adjust to the fact that they are not in government. They were never really in government, Mr Speaker. The Follett Government was really a toboggan without a driver. That was open government, all right. We could see what was in the toboggan but it did not have a driver. There is this constant reference to the fact that we are going to use our numbers. No group, no political grouping in this country, is more adept at using its numbers and playing the numbers game than the ALP Left. It has to do it to survive. It knows all about numbers; so clearly the Leader of the Opposition's references to the prediction that we will use our numbers is truly - to use Mr Moore's oft-quoted words - a psychological projection. Certainly, Mr Speaker, they are not born to rule and we have proven that; nor are they fit to rule, and we have proven that.
Clearly, there is ample precedent for the structure we propose. In the Commonwealth arena, as my colleague Mr Humphries indicated, a government senator without ministerial responsibilities is nominated for the chair of each Senate estimates committee in the establishing motion. There is no worry about even a back room deal. It is simply put in the establishing motion and that motion goes through on the numbers, by the Labor Party I invite you to look at the Senate records in that regard. Again, constantly, in the South Australian Parliament a government member of the House of Assembly chairs the estimates committee. That is my advice.
We have been delayed a long time this evening, once again, bringing this divided factionalised Labor Party to the realisation that we want to govern in an orderly fashion, in a fashion established elsewhere in parliamentary assemblies using the Westminster system. Clearly, we are
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