Page 5303 - Week 16 - Thursday, 28 November 1991
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and which reasonably one could expect would be given mature consideration. Yet the Chief Minister appears to be saying that she has already selected the person to fill this job and that within three weeks she is going to have somebody sitting in it.
That, I believe, demonstrates - despite this great consultative process that the Government talks about - that she has made up her mind that, irrespective of the opinion of this Assembly, irrespective of the conventions that apply when a government becomes a caretaker government, irrespective of the fact that this Government is a minority government - I remind you, a minority government - she will have her way. When Mr Collaery started talking to me about this issue 20 minutes or half an hour ago, my first reaction was to say, "That is imposing an unwarranted restriction on the Executive".
Ms Follett: You would be right.
MR KAINE: But I have now heard you. I have heard you express a most uncompromising position. You have stated that you intend to bulldoze this through, you intend to make an appointment and you do not intend to have any regard to the views the other members of this Assembly have expressed. That makes me think very hard about why it is that you are so determined to override and to ride roughshod over this Assembly and move so rapidly. You could move to fill this job temporarily. You do not have to put a permanent appointee into the job within three months of an election, in fact within three weeks of the Assembly dissolving for the election, three weeks before you become a caretaker government. This is, I remind you, a minority government to boot.
If that is going to be your attitude and you do not show some willingness to be a little more cooperative and a little more sensitive to the views of this Assembly, you may well find that, much and all as I have some reservations about it, I will support Mr Collaery and my party will support Mr Collaery, and you will be unable to make the appointment that you seem so determined to make.
Let us have some consultation, let us have some reason, let us have some sensitivity to the issue, and let us bear in mind that, if you put somebody in this job under those conditions and the government changes in February, you put your appointee in a very difficult position because that person will know that he or she was appointed over the objections of the new government. Just bear it in mind, let us hear some sense and let us have some rationality on this.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (6.23): I am surprised at Mr Kaine's comments, Mr Speaker.
Mr Kaine: I am disturbed at your comments; that is what I am disturbed about.
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