Page 2368 - Week 08 - Friday, 21 June 1991
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MR DUBY: I will come to those matters in a moment, please. The Liberal Party have then gone off crying to the Labor Party and said, "Isn't this awful? Guess what happened. We had a vote today and we lost. What we have to do is change the rules so that we cannot ever lose and, of course, you cannot ever lose either in the future. The system should be rigged so that invariably the Leader of the Opposition shall always be, perhaps, a leader of the Liberal Party or a leader of the Labor Party". That is the simple, absolute travesty of this situation.
We followed the standing orders as they currently apply for the election of a leader of an opposition. We did it in a democratic and correct fashion, and now they do not like the result; so they change the rules. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, should be ashamed of yourself for having agreed to put up this motion. It is a travesty.
During Mr Berry's speech he made a number of comments along the lines that the reason that the Labor Party have decided to change the standing orders so that I no longer hold this position is that I supposedly have announced that I am not going to perform the duties of the job. I have never at any stage said that, Mr Deputy Speaker. What I have announced is that I will decline to use the extra salary for my own purposes. I have never ever denied in any way that I would fulfil the duties of Leader of the Opposition, as a coordinator between the Government and other Opposition members. I defy Mr Berry to produce a record of some kind, of any kind, where I say that that is the case.
The simple fact is that Mr Humphries is no more my leader than I am his, or than I am Mr Stevenson's leader, or than I am Mr Moore's, or, for that matter, than I am all the other members' - Mr Collaery, Mr Jensen or Dr Kinloch. For the Liberal Party and the Labor Party to maintain that having the position of Leader of the Opposition, which enables the retention of the existing duopoly, is the only effective method of having a Leader of the Opposition is clearly untrue, unfair and outdated. We actually had a real possibility here, with me in the position of Leader of the Opposition, of establishing a new role and a new model for this process to work, particularly given our small Assembly.
Whilst everyone shouts and says that it will be a two-party system in the future, there is every possibility in my view, Mr Deputy Speaker, that, given the volatility of Canberra politics, there will always be a number of groups represented in this Assembly. It would not surprise me in the least to have people like the much vaunted Democrats, whom we hear so much about, sitting in the next Assembly. I certainly have reason to believe that quite a number of members here who are not members of the Government or the Liberal Party will also be returned. So, to suggest that in future the Leader of the Opposition shall always be that leader of the party, I think, is an absolute travesty.
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