Page 2350 - Week 08 - Friday, 21 June 1991
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MR KAINE: The Assembly speaks in strange ways, I have discovered over the months, Mr Duby. I am sure you have witnessed before that the Assembly very often speaks in strange ways. I think that today we are seeing a further expression of the strangeness of the ways of this body. I believe that shortly we are going to see Leader of the Opposition No. 3 for this day.
We can debate the rights and wrongs of that and we can talk about the Westminster system and the House of Representatives precedent and all of those things. Most of it is entirely irrelevant because we had a debate this afternoon, on the motion of Mr Stevenson, which led to the conclusion that we should be, perhaps, trying to turn this place into a different kind of Assembly. Yet every time we try to do something differently somebody jumps up and says, "You cannot do that because it is not prescribed in the handbook for the House of Representatives" or "It is not prescribed in the handbook for the Westminster system".
I must admit that I have been most impressed by that part of the debate put forward by my leader that says that, in practice, somebody who sits on the cross benches not only should not be voting on whether or not we have a Leader of the Opposition but should not even be debating it, because he set himself aside from the Government and the Opposition when he opted to sit on the cross benches. So, here we have this curious sequence of events which will culminate tonight, in a few minutes, in the passing of a motion from the Liberal Party that we again try to formalise this process of how the Leader of the Opposition will be determined in this place.
People can argue that it is undemocratic, that it is inappropriate, that it does not suit them because they did not vote for it or whatever they like, after the event; but I submit that the members of this Assembly are still able to exercise their will and they are still able to change their mind between one vote and another if they so wish. And I think that what we are about to see, perhaps, is some members of the Assembly changing their mind in the course of the evening's debate.
To end where I think I began, this day will go down in the history of the Assembly as being that day on which there were three Leaders of the Opposition in one day, and I guess that that is just another record we are going to have to live down.
MR JENSEN (8.21): Mr Speaker, I would seek to move an amendment to the motion by deleting everything after "5B". Quite clearly, what that would do is bring us back to the motion that I sought leave to move this afternoon; to delete the position of the Leader of the Opposition from the standing orders completely. Mr Kaine and Mr Humphries have talked about parliamentary practices, et cetera. I think it is important to remember that the fact that things
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