Page 4052 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 22 October 1991
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It seems to me, reading back over that transcript, that what members are missing is an understanding of tone. The closest we got to an understanding was when Mr Duby said earlier that it was quite clear that Mr Connolly actually did not mean to deliberately mislead the house. If Mr Connolly did not mean to deliberately mislead the house, why the hell have we got a censure motion before us? I think that is a very important question to ask. I think it is entirely inappropriate, at this time, to have a censure motion over this issue.
Even if we accept the censure motion, the points that Dr Kinloch has raised are most appropriate. We have had a series of apologies from Mr Connolly, confined, I grant you, to the extent to which this could have been misinterpreted or misunderstood. He has referred, of course, to the difference between the words written on the page and the tone. We had an example earlier about the Speaker referring to macrame.
There is another example that comes clearly from that same Hansard the other night when Mr Collaery responded, obviously in a light-hearted tone, "Well, my car spent a day in the middle of a river recently and I think it needs replacing soon". The tone is, quite clearly, very light-hearted; but it is true to say that Mr Collaery, a little earlier in an interjection, said something like, "Well, it was about a half of a day, or a little more than half of a day", or something. One could argue that there was a conflict in what Mr Collaery was saying and in some way he was misleading the house about how much time his car spent in the middle of a river.
I think tone is an absolutely critical part of what we do. Quite clearly, the whole issue has been taken right out of context. I would say that it has been taken right out of context simply for political point scoring. I do not want to be particularly hypocritical. There have been times in this house when I also have sought blood, or scored a point. I think that is a nice way to say it. I think it is fair to say that, in raising the issue that Ms Maher raised, she was about scoring a point or about catching Mr Connolly out, and to that extent she has done so and he has apologised.
It was followed up in question time today when Mr Duby, in an interjection, said that Mr Connolly got it wrong, that he had misled the house. Mr Duby was put in a corner by the Speaker because the only thing left for Mr Duby to do was either to bring on a substantive motion or to withdraw what he had said about misleading the house. He got himself in a corner. The result of that is that this Assembly has spent an hour and a half, or whatever it is, debating in order to get Mr Duby out of a corner that he had put himself in instead of saying that he would withdraw what he said about misleading the house.
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