Page 5100 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 12 December 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Finally, Mr Stevenson mentioned that we do not have the safeguard of an upper house review. I am not sure whether Mr Stevenson is departing from and resiling from his own platform of abolition and detuning of the parliamentary process. If he is suggesting that upper houses perform an effective process, then that brings into question Mr Stevenson's own commitment to keeping government at the lowest possible level in terms of costs and impact for the taxpayer.
Mr Stevenson has raised a matter which may have been designed to draw out the Opposition and to start an activity against us. I am sure that Opposition members understand, for better or worse, politics and ideology aside, that our roles in this Assembly, jointly or separately and hopefully more consultatively, are extremely high pressured and very difficult.
Mr Stevenson: Mr Speaker, I have heard no better example of a need for a right of reply to MPIs than Mr Collaery's words.
MR SPEAKER: Thank you. You did not have the floor then. Your behaviour today has been extraordinarily bad, Mr Stevenson. Please desist.
Mr Stevenson: I would not say "extraordinarily bad".
MR SPEAKER: For you, it is.
Mr Stevenson: Thank you. I agree with that.
MR MOORE (3.33): Mr Speaker, it seems to me that we have heard some hypocrisy just in Mr Collaery's last sentence. In fact, he made quite a number of good points in his speech, but some I have a little more difficulty with. For example, in his last sentence he talked about how the Alliance Government is consultative and would do its very best to be so - after last night's efforts when I sought to have just the Interim Planning Bill discussed. I was quite happy to allow it to be brought on today. I pointed out that, with just a bit of discussion, I was sure the Bill could have been handled in 10 or 15 minutes, and I still believe that that would have been the case. However, instead of that, the Alliance Government decided to push on in the way they did and dealt with it on anything but a consultative basis.
I think it was interesting to note the point on which Mr Collaery attacked my colleague Mr Stevenson - my colleague of the crossbenches - namely, that an upper house is an inappropriate safeguard. Of course, it was interesting in that Mr Collaery, having no logical and rational argument to deal with it, decided instead to attack Mr Stevenson. I have certainly never stood on any platform of abolishing self-government and I believe that we do have a problem with this Assembly insofar as we do not have an upper house. I do not believe that the solution is to provide an upper house; it is not. But - - -
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .