Page 4823 - Week 16 - Monday, 25 November 1991
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MR MOORE (3.52): These two Bills we are debating cognately really demonstrate how desperate Labor are to do absolutely nothing. All the arguments about national strategies and so forth are important; they are sensible and they are rational; but that does not prevent us from doing something now. It may well be that in six months' time there may need to be some modifications to the Bills put up by Mr Collaery.
Here is a case where Labor are keen to ensure that nobody else has done anything. The arguments that I heard ring hollow, particularly those from Mrs Grassby. To say that we have to put things off to somebody else and that we cannot make decisions ourselves just at the moment is nonsense. We can proceed. We can deal with this situation now.
This is a quite sensible set of amendments, and the national perspective on the matter is also very important. The two are not mutually exclusive. You have tried to argue that the two are mutually exclusive. They simply are not. It is quite appropriate for us to move now with these quite sensible provisions that Mr Collaery has suggested and, if there is a variation that comes out of the national strategy, it will be quite appropriate for us also to move those amendments. (Quorum formed)
I had completed my speech just as the quorum was called.
Ms Follett: Do it again.
MR MOORE: I will not take the opportunity of speaking again, because we have further important legislation to consider. It is important to deal with it instead of adopting this practice of putting it off to someone else - the sort of approach that we seem to be seeing more and more often from the Labor benches.
MR COLLAERY (3.55), in reply: I rise more in sorrow than in anger. At about 2 o'clock today I heard the Attorney make on radio the most outrageous comment about the Alliance Government - that we had proposed, among other things, to amalgamate the Small Claims Court and the Supreme Court. That is a populist argument which is entirely incorrect and is not supported in any way by the documentation we left behind or by the proposals put forward. I used to say that we would see Mr Connolly back here as a Chief Minister one day. I found his speech today offensive and I am concerned that we lawyers, given our collegiate, have to say things like that.
I found the band wagon comments utterly offensive. If you go through this report entitled "Access to Interpreters in the Australian Legal System", the Commonwealth Attorney-General's report - I am not going to bore you with it - you will find it sprinkled with cases that I had a role in. I am certainly not on a band wagon. I believe that the Attorney knows that that was a cheap shot.
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