Page 4044 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 22 October 1991
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discovered a faxed copy of a letter from Mr Charles McDonald of the Trades and Labour Council in which he had expressed concern or reservations about the particular proposition I had said had no objection or concern expressed about it.
Mr Moore: How did you vote then?
MR HUMPHRIES: What I did in those circumstances was the appropriate and proper thing. I rose immediately in my place and said that clearly I had been in error in saying to the house that there was no objection, concluding that Mr McDonald's objection did constitute a contradiction of what I had said, and I apologised immediately to the house for having said that. That, with respect, Mr Deputy Speaker, was the appropriate thing to have done then. It would have been the appropriate thing to have done now in this case as well.
To move a motion of censure on that issue, as Mr Berry was trying to do, is no less nitpicking or no more nitpicking than this issue here. From the standards that Labor itself has set, this matter deserves to be debated, because if I had not withdrawn Mr Berry would certainly have moved that motion of censure. If that is worth picking about, if that nit is worth picking about, then so is this nit.
We have heard the defence put forward by Mr Connolly. I listened very carefully to what he had to say to consider whether he has a point and whether he ought to be given the benefit of the doubt. He says that he consistently said, throughout the time that he spent in the Estimates Committee giving evidence, that the Government did not know exactly where cuts were going to be made and was going to have to see what the process of negotiation with the trade union movement would produce. That is a reasonable line, I think.
He detailed the line of questioning that was being pursued by members of the Opposition, members of the other parties. He said that they were homing in on a particular series of issues; that they were trying to trap the Government on those issues. It is nice to have an acknowledgment, Mr Deputy Speaker, that in fact the Opposition did have a consistent and concerted line of attack, which is more than Mr Berry has conceded; but that is another matter.
Mr Connolly then says: "In answering this particular question of the chairman's about the changes in the number of staff employed in licensing related functions in the children's day care services section, I was in fact answering the previous question. That was the theme of the day - additional staff - and I was responding to that theme, that larger theme, rather than the specific question which had been put to me".
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