Page 4950 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 11 December 1990
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Mr Moore: You goofed; admit it.
MR STEFANIAK: Not at all. What would have happened if they had succeeded? What would have happened if they had passed all sorts of amazing edicts and motions? All right, we would have come back with the numbers and reversed them, and that would have been even more of a farce.
Mr Speaker, they say that you were not maintaining the dignity of the Assembly. You were in a very difficult position and in that difficult position you finally managed to adjourn the Assembly, an Assembly which should have been adjourned some time earlier had the adjournment debate gone on in its normal course without people trying to pull a whole lot of clever stunts. They should have just got on with the actual business of the Assembly. I think that if we did a little bit more of that we might have a little bit more dignity as a chamber.
In terms of the dignity of the Assembly, let us face it, not only the Canberra community but everyone else in Australia is all set to look at anything we do, especially anything ridiculous, and make a lot of fun of it, and - - -
Mr Connolly: There are plenty of opportunities on your side.
MR STEFANIAK: There are quite a few on your side as well, Mr Connolly. We probably all really need to lift our game. There is nothing wrong, of course, with cross-chamber banter. I suppose we are here to play politics as much as anything else, and that is all part and parcel of performing in a chamber such as this. But we are also here to get on with business. Really, when it all boils down, it is what governments and oppositions actually do substantively that decides whether the Opposition wins an election or the Government loses it or the Government wins it. That is what concerns the public out there - not what sort of amateur theatrics go on in here, with people trying to make rather petty and rather stupid little political points along the way and trying to take advantage of situations. I do not think there is any real cause for that.
The bottom line is basically how a government's policies are going or not going, and perhaps how effective the Opposition is in highlighting those problems. That decides who wins elections. Let us face it, the next election in 1992 is certainly not going to be decided on theatrics in this house at all. That is simply not relevant, and people watching such theatrics just think, "There they are; the politicians are at it again". I think we would do a lot better if we discussed substantive matters of debate. Certainly people are going to take points scored and they will play a few little games there. I have no problems with that; that is part and parcel of being in politics. But I think it is far more important that we actually get
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