Page 5239 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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Mr Deputy Speaker, it is a fact that in leaving only two people in charge of the entire Government Mr Kaine has deserted his duty. His duty, as Chief Minister, is to ensure that there are adequate arrangements for the government of this Territory, whether he is in the country or not. He has not given us any such assurance.
Mr Jensen: More than Clyde Holding gave us.
MS FOLLETT: Mr Jensen interjects, Mr Deputy Speaker, that that is a lot more than previous Federal Ministers have given us, and I am inclined to agree with him. That is why I always supported self-government. I believe that the people of the ACT deserve to have people whom they elect taking full carriage of all of the decisions and all of the laws that affect them. Mr Deputy Speaker, you have to bear in mind that half of the people who are left behind in charge - the Mr Duby half - went to the people on a platform opposing self-government. I wonder whether he will have a sudden excess of conscience and decide that it might be worth trying to implement that policy while he almost has the numbers. He could probably talk Mr Collaery into it.
Mr Collaery, of course, Mr Deputy Speaker, is so obsessed with his own conspiracy theories about everything to do with every member of this Assembly that we can only wait with bated breath to see what kinds of actions he may take when he, in effect, is in sole command of the Territory. It was Mr Collaery, Mr Deputy Speaker, who brought down the last Government.
Mr Jensen: Oh, that is your problem. That is what is annoying you. The penny has dropped.
MS FOLLETT: It is quite clearly Mr Collaery's intention, by his own statements about his fellow Ministers, to bring down yet another government. I do not think members opposite should kid themselves about that.
Mr Collaery's only electoral chances lie in making himself somehow look different from the current Government, the current Liberal Government. Mr Collaery, I believe, has started his run at that very strategy. Mr Collaery has started already to put the knife in, to start talking about his colleague Mr Humphries' management of the health and education portfolios in such a way that Mr Collaery himself can distance himself from those decisions. It is a deliberate strategy. It is a strategy that is aimed purely and selfishly towards Mr Collaery's own electoral chances, and it will be a strategy that he will follow up, I believe, during the absence of the Liberal Ministers. It is not a strategy that has anything to do with the good government of the Territory, but Mr Kaine has left us in those hands.
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