Page 5227 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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our Cabinets meet during that summer month of January. Mr Wood says that it is a very long period. It is not really the period that is involved; it is really what is on. The fact is that it is our summer month in this country and, please God, there will be no emergency and there will be no need to exercise any of the powers to recall the Assembly and bring people back from overseas or anywhere that may be necessary.
I note that Ms Follett, the Leader of the Australian Labor Party Opposition in this chamber, was absent from Australia from 28 October to 10 November during two of the busiest, most contentious weeks of our year in this Territory. They were the weeks when the school groups were fighting like blazes to press their causes. They were the two weeks when those groups were clamouring for assistance from this Leader of the Opposition. Where was she? She was in the United States of America during those two acute, important weeks for the agenda of the Australian Labor Party.
So we are going to allow two of our very hardworking Ministers leave in that summer month. Big deal! What a fatuous MPI! I thought, Mr Speaker, that Mr Wood did not do himself justice with his last matter of public importance in the chamber this year. How fatuous it is. Mr Speaker, there is legislation on the table today that is very important - the keep-the-peace legislation, the .05 blood alcohol legislation and other legislation that must be passed - yet Mr Wood seeks to delay debate on these very important matters. Further, there are important committee reports that we need to get through.
Why has this MPI been lodged today? Its effect is to engender further negative press for politicians in general. Mr Wood accepts now the appellation "House of Farce". I very much regret that Mr Wood, as a member of this chamber, sees fit to accept that noxious appellation. This is democracy. This is a house for the delivery of democratic decision making. If Mr Wood wants to say that it is a house of farce and Mr Berry wishes to again hold up that obnoxious poster, so be it. You should be aware that some of that rubs off on us all.
What you have done today, Mr Wood, through you, Mr Speaker, is to once again tell the public that politicians are somehow uncaring; that they are self-seeking; that they cannot have holidays. That is the sort of prejudice and perception that we politicians fight against. You well know it. So, you fed the vultures again, Mr Wood, through you, Mr Speaker. Good on you; you fed the vultures again. You were not generous enough to realise that, for better or worse, ideology apart, Mr Humphries and Mr Kaine worked extremely hard in the last session of the Assembly. They have been under intense personal strain. Mr Humphries had to gird his loins every second night at school protest meetings. Let me read into the record a statement by Mr Whalan on 26 April 1990 in this house. Mr Paul Whalan said:
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