Page 2622 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
the possibility of wide recruitment of highly competent people. We also need levels of remuneration which put beyond likelihood the possibility of members having to seek extra remuneration from second jobs and professions.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (3.50): I feel that it is hardly necessary for me to speak. I think Dr Kinloch has put it better than any of the rest of us could have done. I just want to say one thing: A workman is worthy of his hire. I do not care whether that workman is in this Assembly or anywhere else. We did not determine the level of our remuneration. An independent arbitrator made a determination. That arbitrator has available all of the necessary knowledge to make comparisons between what we and other people do. Since I have been a member of this Assembly, from the days when we did not even know that we were going to get any remuneration, I have consistently said that I would accept the decision of the arbitrator, and I do not think you can do better than that.
If we were sitting here making our own determinations, it could legitimately be said that we were feathering our nests. That is not the case. If Mr Stevenson or anybody else argues that the Remuneration Tribunal is incapable of making a proper judgment or that somehow or other it has made a mistake or that we should set aside the judgment of that body once it has made it, I think they are living in cloud cuckoo land, and we cannot be too persuaded by that kind of argument. I think Dr Kinloch put the argument very well and, as I said, I do not believe that there is very much one can add to that. Mr Deputy Speaker, I merely reiterate my longstanding view that we accept the decision of the arbitrator and get on with it.
MR MOORE (3.51): Mr Deputy Speaker, Mr Stevenson bases a lot of his arguments in this Assembly on representing the people and doing so by conducting polls. I believe that the poll that he should next put to people should be to this effect: Do you think a person who was elected to abolish self-government should resign from the Assembly?
Mr Stevenson: I have already asked whether people want me to continue to try to abolish it, and indeed they do. I have asked, and it was 63 per cent. Mr Moore can ask it any time he wishes.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Are you finished, Mr Moore? I am sorry; the Clerk was asking me a question.
MR MOORE: There was an interjection from Mr Stevenson, which avoided the question that I asked him, in the standard way that Mr Stevenson manages time and time again to twist the truth, to do things by innuendo, by allegation, to try to put his arguments which are not based on the original premise and which are therefore invalid. The question for Mr Stevenson, again, was not whether you think you should try to abolish it; it was: Do you think a person who was elected to abolish self-government should now resign from the Assembly?
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .