Page 3428 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 September 1990
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So we have a constant move of Dorian Gray away from ethical practice. Of course, Oscar Wilde, being the person he was, did not miss the money issue. I note that this was something the Chief Minister referred to, but let me clarify that by saying that I am not associating the Chief Minister himself in any way with Dorian Gray. I make that quite clear.
Mrs Grassby: He does not look a bit like him. Dorian Gray was supposed to be young.
Mr Kaine: I have grey hair.
MR MOORE: Well, at this time, Chief Minister, it probably would not be appropriate to say you are a picture. In the discussion on page 216 we read:
"They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger -
and I suppose we can think of the Government and its budget here -
they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy".
So we see Dorian Gray's move in terms of his own ethics. I have only a couple more quotes from this to go, Mr Speaker, but I think it is appropriate. The next one is most interesting. It is interesting that Ted Mack should describe the Government - let us remember we are talking about the Government - as a picture of Dorian Gray, because on page 221 Wilde writes:
The consciousness of being hunted, snared, tracked down -
one gets the feeling that he is talking about some form of paranoia -
had begun to dominate him. If the tapestry did but tremble in the wind, he shook.
And, whilst Dorian Gray probably did not go from one hotel room to another hotel room and so forth, he did, of course, feel the paranoia associated with the corruption of his own ethics. Finally, to summarise, towards the end of the book, on page 232, Wilde writes:
Civilisation is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.
Of course, we are all - well, perhaps not all of us, but some of us - very aware of Oscar Wilde's rather cynical attitude to life.
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