Page 4945 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 11 December 1990
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Mr Berry: He has left them out in the cold.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Do you really want to pursue it? His time has expired, Mr Berry.
MR WOOD (4.10): Mr Jensen has claimed that the Opposition is not serious in its approaches. For Mr Jensen's sake, can I read again the motion that we proposed - a most serious motion that in any other parliament I know of would have been taken on board as a matter of priority. That censure motion reads:
That the Assembly censures the conservative Alliance Government for its reprehensible abandonment of the ACT Assembly during the 29 November sitting. Furthermore the Assembly censures the Government and the Speaker for failing to maintain acceptable standards of behaviour in the chamber.
We were serious, but you do not want to face up to the responsibilities following upon your actions here. Mr Jensen's tactic was to endeavour to lighten the debate. That was the way he took it, because he wanted to push the seriousness of our thrust as far away as he could. His whole speech further lowered the dignity of this house.
Mr Speaker, the most regrettable circumstances in the Assembly last Thursday that led to this motion arose from three failures. The first failure was that of organisation. After one year, this Government has been unable to find a system for the effective operation of this parliament. It is simply unable to operate so that this Assembly runs as a real parliament. We saw evidence of that a moment ago. Perhaps it is inevitable, because the people opposite know so little about parliamentary traditions. We have seen ample evidence of that in the last year and a half. This Government cannot even observe one basic rule, and that is, keep the numbers. Keep the numbers is the basic rule, and it could not even do that. Last Thursday we saw the round eyes of Mr Collaery when he suddenly realised that he had lost the numbers, and the sort of panic that then followed. It was a relatively simple operation of maintaining its majority, and the Government could not do that. No wonder the whole system is in such a mess.
Government members demonstrate that same lack of planning that we have seen in so many other things. We have no formal arrangement for pairs. That should be a clear enough warning to the Government and to its whips and to the leader of the house, but they could not understand that. We have this strange business of Mr Humphries coming over to Mr Berry. It has not yet been asked: why did Mr Humphries come over? It was not his business. That is how disorganised a rabble they are. It was Mr Jensen's business. I would imagine that, in the absence of Mrs Nolan, it may have been Mr Collaery's business as manager
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