Page 4590 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 20 November 1991
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MR HUMPHRIES: You were not there, Mr Connolly. His answer was, "Ask the Minister for police, Mr Connolly". That was his answer. This is typical of the buck-passing that we get in this Government which, again, is unacceptable. Who am I supposed to ask? Does anyone want to offer an answer?
Mr Kaine: You had better ask the Chief Minister. You might get an answer.
MR HUMPHRIES: I would like to ask the Chief Minister, but I think I would get a fairly predictable answer from her - "Ask the Minister for Health" or "Ask the Minister for police".
Mr Kaine: That is if she was here to ask.
MR HUMPHRIES: If she was here to ask, indeed. We have had this sort of thing all the time in this Assembly. I could go through the details of the incredible obfuscation and refusal to answer questions with respect to hospital bed numbers - an endless refusal to answer the questions and an endless refusal to justify why admission levels are projected to go down in the Territory in the course of this next year, despite their being much higher last year. (Extension of time granted)
There has been an endless refusal to answer those questions. Why was it that decisions were made that based the projection for hospital services on a nil population growth in the Territory? There was no attempt to answer the question - "Too hard"; "Not going to bother"; "We do not consider it important that we answer that question". That is disgraceful.
We are not merely the persecutors of Mr Berry. We are the parliament of this Territory. We are entitled to ask, and we are entitled to receive answers to, questions that touch on the peace, order and good government of this Territory. We have not received those answers. We have not received even the courtesy of a pretence that the answers should be provided by the Ministers of this Government. I suspect that, if that particular attitude continues on the part of this Government, the citizens of the Territory will see it, as they have seen it so far - do not think that they have not; I assure the Government that they have - and this Government will have judgment made on it in the election in February of next year.
MR MOORE (4.52): Mr Speaker, I think it is very important to distinguish between some of the possibilities we have as far as questions go. One area that I think it is most important to mention is, of course, questions on notice, because there are a number of questions that can be handled by putting them on notice, and then getting sensible answers. The difficulty with placing questions on the notice paper is that it takes a quite lengthy time to get an answer. The advantage, of course, is that one is not restricted in the number one can ask.
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