Page 2224 - Week 07 - Thursday, 6 June 1991
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MR MOORE (5.26): Mr Speaker, on 5 December 1989 I said to Trevor Kaine, through you, Mr Speaker:
Allow me to provide just one small warning by quoting from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar ...:
Let me have men about me that are fat ... and such as sleep o' nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look ... such men are dangerous.
I then went on to congratulate Mr Kaine on his coup and I said to him at that stage:
It will require all your ability and all your own integrity to keep it together.
And, of course, that was not possible. The Alliance Government was founded on self-interest and it has foundered on self-interest. We have heard time and time again the argument that it was there for stable government. In the last two and a bit years that I have been a member of this Assembly, I have heard that term "stable government" used again and again. And every time I hear it I hear something being covered up. Stable government seems to be the excuse used for almost anything.
It is interesting and it is ironic that members of the Residents Rally and members of the Liberal Party have suddenly regained an enthusiasm for collegiate government. They were not interested in collegiate government; they were not interested in consultation; they were not interested in being able to allow other members to participate fairly in the business of this Assembly; no, they would get their numbers together. But now, when they are on the back foot, they are interested in some form of collegiate government.
I said also on 5 December:
... I now seek an assurance from you, Mr Kaine ... that the discussion and the openness that has been a part and parcel of this minority government will continue with the new Government; and that the debates will be in the open, in this Assembly, where members of the crossbenches, Mr Stevenson and I, can continue debating each issue on its merits.
Let me take you back now to the debate on the interim planning legislation a year after that statement. I debated long and hard over a series of issues on which I was well aware that members of the Rally in particular, and other members of this house, agreed with me wholeheartedly. But was there an open debate? Was there anything open? Were issues debated on their merits? Not at all. Rather, the contrary.
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