Page 5233 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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time for you. Mrs Nolan, I am sure, will be nervous. Perhaps she might put some distance between herself and this place, just to relieve herself of some of that responsibility. But you have broad shoulders and I think you are going to need them.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (4.46): Mr Speaker, I really felt quite sorry for poor Mr Wood, who obviously had had the baton passed to him to speak in this debate and obviously felt rather uncomfortable about the whole thing. I fully sympathise with him and I can understand his discomfort. However, I have to say that the Government understands that it is important to provide, in the course of these next few months, for proper administration of the Territory and, of course, that is what the Government has done.
I am amused and bemused by the Opposition's attitude. It has been hypercritical of all Ministers in this Government, I suppose, but of me in particular; yet it seems to think that my absence from the Territory will be a major blow to the administration of health and education and the arts. That is a very strange attitude. I just do not understand how they can come to that conclusion. I would have thought they would be grateful that I would be away, but apparently not.
Mr Wood: You did not listen to my advice. I said, "Get in here over Christmas and do some swatting".
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Deputy Speaker, could I have some order?
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, Mr Wood!
MR HUMPHRIES: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I would have thought that those opposite would be grateful to see a little absence on the part of some Ministers in the Government, but obviously that is not the case.
Mr Duby: They just cannot get enough of you, Gary.
MR HUMPHRIES: They just cannot get enough of me, obviously. I will leave Mr Wood a large picture of me, if he likes, and he can look at it while I am away. Mr Deputy Speaker, Mr Wood wants to raise the tone of the Assembly. He wants to make the Assembly a place worthy of more respect by the citizens of the ACT. I do not think that the muckraking which has gone on today would serve that purpose by any means, and I certainly do not think that any comments that have been made by him would make people think more highly of this Government or this Assembly.
The argument, it seems to me, Mr Deputy Speaker, is not about whether Government members are away for six weeks; it seems to be about whether they are away, for example, for any longer than other Government Ministers are away from other places. The times that Ministers spend away from their desks, recuperating and recharging their batteries, is not a matter for public information.
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