Page 3424 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 September 1990
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MR HUMPHRIES: If you were, Mr Wood, I would be happy to accept this; but I do not think anybody in this chamber has a monopoly on saintliness or piety, and I do not think that we need necessarily to use these as the touchstone for establishing the standards which we, as members of the Assembly, ought to follow.
I have a feeling that more practical expressions of those standards would be very much more welcome. Mr Wood has said in this debate that the Assembly is "a long way from being well accepted in the community". Indeed, he has a point in that comment, but I do not think that the sort of stirring and accusation that has come from those opposite has in any way assisted the Assembly to go any way towards being more acceptable in the community.
Mr Wood: What stirring do you mean?
MR HUMPHRIES: I mean stirring with respect to the kinds of accusations hurled across the chamber, both here and in a public sense, against members of the Assembly and members of the Government.
Mr Wood: Which accusations? I do not know what you are talking about.
MR HUMPHRIES: I refer to the comments that have been made over a long period of time, Mr Wood, about lack of propriety on the part of members of the Government.
Mr Moore: You mean Mr Collaery's about Mr Whalan and so forth? That sort of example?
MR HUMPHRIES: Well, that kind of highly personalised name calling in which, unfortunately, those opposite have become specialists in recent months. Whatever you think about that, it cannot for one moment be said to attract praise and approbation from those in the community who happen to have an opinion about this Assembly. It certainly detracts from the image of this Assembly, and that particular issue has been the last thing on the minds of those opposite when they have hurled those kinds of comments. I think those opposite should be very careful before they paint themselves as the upholders of virtue.
I might remind members of the Assembly that this is the only legislature in Australia in which people who are subject to proceedings under the Bankruptcy Act may sit. It is interesting that that was a provision put in there by the Federal Labor Government for reasons which I will not elaborate on but which do reflect - - -
Mr Kaine: They are rather obscure, Gary.
MR HUMPHRIES: They are rather obscure. I will not help the people who read Hansard, but I think we all know what I am referring to. Yet those opposite have not at any stage, as far as I am aware, cast doubt on the integrity of that particular part of the self-government Act.
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