Page 5235 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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Mr Wood: You set yourself a very low standard.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, members!
Mr Wood: No, he sets himself a very low standard.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, Mr Wood! Let us not have this cross-chamber banter while someone else is speaking.
Mr Wood: It is not banter.
Mr Duby: No, it is dickering.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Dickering, banter, whatever; let us just keep it down.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Deputy Speaker, as I said, January is not a time when Canberra is known for being vibrant and alive. It is a time, as I said, when schools are not in operation and when hospitals are usually at a fairly low level of activity. That has been the case every year for as many years as I can remember and I think it is hard to imagine a reason for a full complement of four Ministers to be sitting at their desks, peering around and watching for disasters to happen, because they do not generally happen at that time of year.
The Opposition says that we should not take time off. That is pretty rich, coming from the Opposition, Mr Deputy Speaker, because the Opposition has had the whole year off. They have sat at those desks and have failed again and again to discuss real issues of real importance to this Territory. They have failed again and again to raise and discuss the matters which are actually important to the administration of this Territory. Now they say that because two Ministers are going to be away over Christmas things are going to fall by the wayside and there are not going to be people here to run the Territory. What an ignorant and ridiculous view. They have failed in these last 12 months to produce anything that I would call decent and to be expected from any reasonable Opposition.
Mr Stevenson: Labor Opposition.
MR HUMPHRIES: Labor Opposition - I correct myself. They have failed to produce an alternative budget, they have failed to come up with alternative policies to the policies they decry in this Government, and they have failed to come up with alternative cost savings to meet the obvious budget problems being faced by this Territory.
They are the ones, Mr Deputy Speaker, who need to spend the time over summer sitting down at their desks and doing a bit of work on the future of this Territory, trying to work out what it is that they think the Territory ought to be doing and then spelling it out to the electorate, not keeping it to themselves. I remind those opposite that
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