Page 5234 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I do not mind some talking, members, but can you keep it down? You are starting to interfere with the speaker. Continue, Mr Humphries.
MR HUMPHRIES: I happened to speak to some other Ministers in Adelaide on Friday about their plans for holidays over the summer break, and a number of them were going away for a number of weeks. We did not actually compare periods away; but other Ministers, I know, were going away for four or five weeks and those Ministers certainly - - -
Mr Connolly: Is half of any Cabinet going to be away?
Mr Wood: Government shutting down?
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Deputy Speaker, please! They were going away for four or five weeks. The question really is not whether either I or the Chief Minister should go away for six or seven weeks; it is whether we should go away for the one or two weeks more than perhaps other Ministers might go away in other places in this country. I hardly think it makes much difference and I am not prepared to quibble about that. I might put on the public record for my own sake, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I have not taken any leave, except for the few days between Christmas and New Year, since I entered this Assembly in May of last year and I do not plan to take any more, except perhaps for the same period next year.
Mr Stevenson: And you spend a few Sundays in here, too.
MR HUMPHRIES: Thank you, Mr Stevenson.
Mrs Grassby: Don't we all?
Mr Wood: So do lots of people.
MR HUMPHRIES: Perhaps they do, but the fact is that I think that at the end of the day the period of leave that I take over the term of this Assembly would be no greater than that taken by anybody else in this chamber. I would like to compare notes with people who might quibble with that point when the end of this Assembly comes around.
I have to say that it is also churlish of those opposite to criticise us for going overseas. At least I can say, Mr Deputy Speaker, that no Minister of this Government ever went overseas while the Assembly was sitting, which is more than can be said for a person opposite when that person was in government and was a Minister.
The Opposition says that it is a bad time to be away. I say, as I think Mr Collaery said, that there is no better time to be away from Canberra than in January. As everybody who has lived in this town for any period of time knows, the fact of life is that Canberra, of all places in this country, closes down over the whole of January. Schools are closed during that period and hospital activity is not intense.
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