Page 2489 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 1991
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Mr Speaker, these things happen under a socially just, allegedly, Labor administration. My Bill seeks simply to amend the Act, to the extent that I can, within powers, to require the Chief Minister, in making determinations, to treat members equally.
Mr Berry: This is about Bernard Collaery not being able to live up to promises to his staff.
MR COLLAERY: Mr Berry, that great social justice proponent, cannot see his way clear to do it. I regret the fact that we have to air this publicly and that it has to be done by way of legislation. It is being done by way of legislation because Mr Berry undertook, shortly after we went out of government, to have a review conducted. He even mentioned the name of someone. We find, on 14 June, the Chief Minister saying again that she will have a review conducted. Members have received no advice as to that review. We have not been contacted by anyone.
Several important weeks have passed and we are trying to prepare our work for the Assembly. The Rally has, as the public well knows, a long list of private members' legislation to bring forward for the rest of this sitting. It is important legislation in the public interest that the Labor Government will not bring forward, even though it is socially innovative. They know that it is pretty well on the drawing boards. They will not bring it in, in the hope that they will get back into power in February and get the credit for it. So, the community suffers.
The Rally was pushed out of government a day before the vitally important public corruption Bill was to be introduced. I was dismissed the day before. Mr Speaker, to the extent that the legislation allows us to introduce Bills that may involve money, those Bills will be proceeded with from this side of the house. So, it is very important to this Chief Minister, I suggest, to ensure that we are restricted from resources.
Mr Speaker, the Rally has been removed from every chair of this Assembly that it held. That is well known; no-one can deny it. Mr Stefaniak, that great custodian of anti-Labor sympathies, has nominated Mrs Grassby to one, and vice versa, and it went through the Assembly late one night and in days following. The major parties agreed to do that. The only chair we managed to hold was Ms Maher's, because we had Mr Stevenson's good support on the Social Policy Committee. The Labor Party having opposed his appointment to it initially, we managed to get the numbers and preserve one committee for the community. The others, all the salary caps and all the allowances that go with those committees, are held by the fraternity of this house, the Labor-Liberal coalition.
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