Page 4306 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
explicit advice available to the committee and to Mr Moore, yet he chose to speak to a journalist, Mr Uhlmann, and make a statement which was entirely contrary to the evidence given only a short while before and the written material provided to him in the Assembly. Thus, we had the Canberra Times say, quite wrongly and without relevance to the opinion of the Law Office of the Territory, that an error could have cost two Ministers their seats.
The Canberra Times report goes on to state that Mr Moore sought a legal opinion on the procedure before he travelled overseas. He certainly did not, Mr Speaker. (Extension of time granted) The legal opinion was sought by a government that was concerned about travel, as we remain concerned. Mr Moore is shown up palpably and obviously to have done those things for reasons best known to himself, and whatever his motives were they were designed to cause hurt and harm to Mr Duby and me. He exhibited, in my view, Mr Speaker, clear malice towards members of this Assembly.
Mr Kaine: Malice aforethought.
MR COLLAERY: As the Chief Minister said, malice aforethought. Mr Speaker, the Estimates Committee hearing was also taken up with a number of issues concerning performance indicators. During the hearing, late one evening, Mr Berry arrived in the Estimates Committee room. He asked a question about whether we could measure the recidivism of offenders. Having asked that question and got an obvious answer, he left the committee room. Lo and behold, true to form, he went straight out to issue a pre-prepared press statement. It did not matter what the answer was, because it was a stupid question; it had no sense to it. He issued a press statement that the Government could not measure its expenditure in the youth justice area because it could not measure recidivism. That is the approach of some members to the Estimates Committee process. They were not the sitting members, except for Mr Moore, and I regret that Mr Connolly subsequently blotted his copybook in a big way.
Mr Speaker, it should rest on the record that Mr Connolly saw fit to take on board ministerial travel to attend ministerial meetings as junketeering. I will make sure that all his Labor colleagues in this country have a copy of that statement in Hansard and are well aware of the naivety and the inexperience of this member in making such an absurd suggestion. Whilst we will forgive journalists, particularly the occasional journalist who is inexperienced in these matters and who has reported the travel without referring to the numbers of portfolios held and the legislative obligations, we do not forgive politicians here who well know that they have totally abused and misused the circumstances of this travel.
Mr Speaker, as I said, the Follett Government failed to take its place at ministerial meetings around this country. It was a minority government; it was too scared to leave town.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .