Page 2369 - Week 08 - Friday, 21 June 1991
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Mr Collaery: It is illegal. It is unlawful.
MR DUBY: I tend to agree with Mr Collaery. From my scant understanding of the points he has raised with me, I tend to agree with him that it is actually unlawful.
Mr Berry: Are you a judge now?
Mr Connolly: That makes me feel a lot better.
MR DUBY: I am certainly not in the same category of legal expertise and training as Mr Connolly, Mr Collaery or, for that matter, Mr Humphries or you, Mr Deputy Speaker; but in plain commonsense language it appears to me that the steps being taken here today are unlawful and illegal. In addition, I think this is outrageous. The fact remains that I have been elected Leader of the Opposition in a democratic and fair way, and you are now changing the rules to declare that somehow that position no longer exists; and then changing the rules again so that the position will always remain the property of either the Labor Party or the Liberal Party.
Right now the members of the Liberal Party think they are being quite smart. Right now the members of the Liberal Party think they are being smart by cooking up a deal with the Labor Party to achieve this end; but I know - and I am sure of it - that at the end of the day the people of the Territory will see just what grasping, self-seeking organisations the Labor Party and the Liberal Party have become, to involve themselves in such chicanery as this.
This clearly is outrageous. A democratic decision having been taken according to all the rules, you then decide, "We do not like the result, so we will change it". I defy Mr Humphries to again read his Hansard. If he did not say this afternoon that it was undemocratic that he could get only five votes and I could get six, there is something wrong. My ears might need washing, but I heard that myself.
I endorse the comments made by Dr Kinloch and, of course, those of Mr Stevenson in a lot of ways. Dr Kinloch's comments, I think, were very apt. They certainly made far more sense than the theatrical claptrap we had from Mr Speaker, saying that he was going to be threatened with this and threatened with that, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, when he read out the note which supposedly threatened him. To me it made perfect sense. Those of us who know Dr Kinloch's style know exactly what it was and what it implied. There is no way known that that was a threat to the Speaker, particularly from the very man who has announced publicly that he would not support knocking him over. What a load of rubbish it is for you to come here and do all that sort of thing, Mr Speaker.
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