Page 4668 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 27 November 1990
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Mr Speaker, I exhort the members, the responsible members of this Assembly, to support this package of Bills because they are removing an anachronism. They are setting in place a system that in the long run will be beneficial to the very people that these people in opposition claim to represent. The system will allow an opening up in terms of who can get access to the money and how much they can get. We are abolishing it because it is an unreasonable and unrealistic constraint on the actions of this Government, and I know that Mr Berry will have great trouble justifying his present position if and when he ever gets back into government and he is asked to put his money where his mouth is in terms of the money that is being spent out of the CDF today.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts): Mr Speaker, I seek leave to make a personal explanation.
MR SPEAKER: Do you claim to have been misrepresented?
MR HUMPHRIES: Yes, I do, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Please proceed.
Mr Berry: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: that matter ought to be raised at the end of the debate.
MR SPEAKER: It is the end of the debate, Mr Berry.
Mr Kaine: I just closed the debate.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Berry! Please proceed, Mr Humphries.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, in the course of Mr Connolly's comments, Mr Connolly said or implied that I had used the device of threatening a defamation suit as a way of keeping public servants from making comments on public radio. I want to emphasise or indicate very clearly that I have never made any such threat. To my knowledge, no-one in my department has made such a threat. I would ask Mr Connolly to withdraw the allegation that such a threat has been made by me or my department.
Mr Connolly: I will show you the letter from your departmental senior officer.
MR HUMPHRIES: Is he going to withdraw, Mr Speaker?
MR SPEAKER: Order! Would you withdraw - - -
Mr Connolly: No.
MR SPEAKER: The situation, as I understand it, is that Mr Connolly has documentation. I would like him to present that to the Assembly.
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