Page 4035 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 22 October 1991
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MADAM TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ms Maher, could you bring it back to the point of the motion to censure a Minister.
MS MAHER: Yes, okay, for misleading the house. I feel that in the Minister's statement he said that the staffing area that he is reducing is only administrative and not service delivery. I feel that the area is service delivery.
Mr Berry: That is not entirely relevant. That, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, is not relevant to the debate. It is not an issue which is up for grabs in the debate.
MS MAHER: It is a further example of how he is misleading.
Ms Follett: Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I take a point of order. If Ms Maher wishes to raise, to quote her, a further example of misleading, then she must move a separate substantive motion, and she must withdraw that statement.
MADAM TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is correct, Chief Minister. You must stick to the motion we have in hand, Ms Maher.
MS MAHER: All right. I would just like to say that I feel that an answer that was complete and to the point on Thursday would have solved all the problems. When the Minister stood up and started rambling on with regard to the question and how he was answering it, you could tell at the time that he just did not know what was going on and that he should have put it on notice.
I continued to persist because the information I had contradicted what the Minister said. I gave him the opportunity today, and the time, to have a look at the information that he had given to the Estimates Committee, to have a look at the information he gave to me last Thursday and to restate his answer and say what was correct; to say whether there were going to be reductions in the area or whether there were not going to be reductions in the area. That is all he had to clarify.
Mr Connolly: We do not yet know; negotiations are ongoing.
MS MAHER: Not with regard to the questions I asked as to whether there were reductions. Well, I cannot bring that in either.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (4.35): Mr Deputy Speaker, I think Ms Maher's comments on this matter bring home to all of us just what a futile exercise this is. Ms Maher has admitted that she was not present at the Estimates Committee hearing that this matter relates to; nor has she offered, in an incredibly tortuous speech, one shred of support for the motion. She was encouraged to do so on innumerable occasions and she did not because she could not.
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