Page 2341 - Week 08 - Friday, 21 June 1991
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MR HUMPHRIES: A great deal of water has gone under the bridge since then, Mr Connolly, I can assure you. The sad fact, for Mr Duby, is that he had the numbers earlier this afternoon; he no longer has the numbers now. It is as simple as that. Earlier this afternoon Mr Duby was quite prepared to use the numbers that he had at his disposal - a minority of members of this Assembly. He was quite prepared to use those six votes to secure a position for which he did not have the support of a majority of the members of this Assembly. He was quite happy to do so.
Mr Duby: The Government has no say in who is the Leader of the Opposition.
MR HUMPHRIES: He no longer has majority support on the floor of this Assembly and therefore he has to accept the outcome of the vote of this Assembly.
Mr Duby says that the Government should not be involved in electing the Leader of the Opposition. I entirely concur; of course it should not be involved in doing so. But what the Government could do, should do and, I think, will do in the course of this debate is support the principle - the same principle in the Westminster tradition that Mr Duby alluded to only a few minutes ago - that the largest non-government party becomes the Opposition, and the leader of the largest non-government party becomes the Leader of the Opposition. That is the tradition used everywhere else. That is the tradition which I think we should incorporate here, and we should do so expressly by incorporating it into standing orders rather than doing it in any other fashion.
Two or so weeks ago Mr Collaery approached the Alliance Government to remove standing orders 5A and 5B and thereby, so he thought, to abolish the position of Leader of the Opposition from this ACT Assembly.
Mr Jensen: It was not only Mr Collaery; I was there as well.
MR HUMPHRIES: Okay; he and his colleagues agreed, at that time, to do that. They came to us and said, "We would like to abolish the position of Leader of the Opposition and we therefore ask you to support us in this matter". The Alliance, at the time, agreed that standing orders 5A and 5B, as they then stood, ought to go. And that, I might say, is still the position of the Liberal Party; standing orders 5A and 5B, as they stand, ought to go, because to provide that the whole Assembly should elect the Opposition Leader is a mistake. It is contrary to the traditions of the Westminster system.
We are not proposing that the whole Assembly elect the Leader of the Opposition. What we are proposing tonight is that the Opposition Leader be the person who would be opposition leader in any other parliament in the
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