Page 5228 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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I wish Trevor Kaine well in his leadership of the Alliance Government. The Chief Minister is an honourable man. I know that he will face the difficult decisions which confront him with resolution and a sense of decency.
He went on to place on record his admiration of the manner in which Gary Humphries from the Liberal Party had approached his ministerial duties. Mr Whalan said, prophetically:
I am conscious that he is sitting on the hottest set of financial and administrative challenges and I do not envy his role over the next couple of years.
I cannot think of anything more churlish, Mr Speaker, than someone across the way here denying those two gentlemen the leave they so richly deserve. For better or worse, on your politics, ideology apart, it is very churlish of you. Your own party leader, Rosemary Follett, deserted this city to go on a student tour - on a political exchange program - for two weeks in two of the most crucial weeks that this Territory had. She left town for two weeks. That was a highly important time for the many residents of the ACT who looked for guidance from the ALP on the school closure issues.
Mr Wood: How facile.
MR COLLAERY: It is not facile, and you know it. Ministerial leave, with acting arrangements, is a common feature of Australian parliaments. Mr Wood has not provided evidence to justify his assertions. There were no facts, only good well-rounded rhetoric, in what he said. There were no facts there. We are terribly pressed for time on this side and Mr Duby has to finish his Christmas cards. We are so busy here today that we are not in a position to check to see how other politicians went on leave during the last few years around the country. What a miserable item to put on our diet today. What a miserable little item to show us up, to give the Canberra Times another chance to paint us down. Can Mr Wood suggest a better time to go on leave than the month of January? Can he?
Turning now to the acting arrangements, I assure you, Mr Speaker, that Mr Wood need lose no sleep whilst Mr Kaine and Mr Humphries are away. This Territory will be competently managed on a caretaker basis by Mr Duby, as Acting Minister for Health, Education and the Arts, and me as Acting Chief Minister by process of section 44 of the Act.
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