Page 4019 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 22 October 1991
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Leave granted.
MR DUBY: I move:
That this Assembly censures Mr Connolly for misleading this Assembly in answers given in question time on Thursday and today about evidence given to the Estimates Committee concerning reductions in staff numbers in the Children's Day Care Services Section.
This is a sad day, I believe. This motion has come about as a result of the actions, the extraordinary actions, of Mr Connolly in the house on Thursday and, of course, repeated today. What this boils down to is the attitude that has been demonstrated by members of the Government opposite in question time to legitimate questions of concern put by all members of this Assembly about a whole range of issues.
The replies that have been given in question time on the broad range of topics on which questions have been asked of them have invariably not been answers. They have been replies. They have regarded question time in a very flippant fashion. From the way that things have been going in this Assembly since this Government took the treasury benches, it has been only a matter of time before that slip-sloppy approach of theirs to question time has spilled over into this accident, I would like to imagine, of Mr Connolly's, in which, in my view, he has misled this Assembly, and misled it on a number of occasions, concerning responses to questions that he has been asked.
It might be pointed out that in a lot of ways this motion has been brought on Mr Connolly by no-one but himself. If members can cast their minds back to Thursday's question time when the questions which were raised by Ms Maher concerning answers given by Mr Connolly to the Estimates Committee about the number of staff employed in the licensing related functions of the children's day care services section of his department were asked, they will note, I am sure - as I will point out as we go through this debate - that there was nothing vindictive or sneaky about the questions. They were perfectly legitimate questions which said: "It appears to me, Mr Minister, that there is some discrepancy between a public statement you have made in one place and a public statement you have made here".
Mr Connolly was then given the benefit of the doubt, over a period of four or five days, to go and review evidence which he had given to the Estimates Committee. Indeed, in response to a question today, when he was asked, "Have you had an opportunity, Mr Connolly, to review the evidence which you may have given to the Estimates Committee?", the answer he gave most assuredly was, "Yes, yes, I have certainly done that". He again refuted and denied to this Assembly that evidence he had given to the Estimates Committee was what he had factually said.
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