Page 402 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 13 May 1992
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University of Canberra Council
MR CORNWELL: My question is addressed to the Minister for Education. Mr Wood, I refer to my question of 7 April in this place concerning two Assembly appointments to the Council of the University of Canberra following a 10-month delay, and your reported comment in the Canberra Times the next day that the recommendation was going to Cabinet "probably next week". That was a month ago. I would ask when this internal factional wrangling of this Labor Government is to be resolved and - - -
Mr Connolly: The clan or not the clan?
MR CORNWELL: We have only waited 10 months for this, Mr Connolly. When is it to be resolved so that the appointments can be announced and the 11-month inconvenience to the university and the embarrassment that I believe this Assembly has suffered can also be resolved?
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, Mr Cornwell says that something like 10 months has elapsed. I will not dispute his timetable, but we might recall that all the time Mr Humphries was Minister for Education the matter was still current. So, if you want to compare the time frame, maybe you should do that. As to internal factional wrangling, I do not really understand what you are getting at. Maybe you are assuming that because certain things happen on your side of the Assembly they happen over here also. I can tell you that that is not the case.
I will explain what has happened here. I had developed the proposals for appointments to the University of Canberra along with some other appointments and then, I have to say, we looked rather more closely at the requirements and I discovered that I was intruding into the Chief Minister's territory. So, I took my information down to the Chief Minister; but, of course, she has her views. She may be pursuing other ideas; I do not know. But that was - - -
Mr Kaine: Can't you agree?
MR WOOD: The Chief Minister is the Chief Minister and I willingly defer to her views. It was a confusion. Perhaps I should earlier have noted that the appointments are at the direction of the Chief Minister and passed it over earlier. I am sure that, had I done so, it would be well and truly settled by now.
Clinical Waste
MRS GRASSBY: My question is to the Minister for Urban Services. Could the Minister please explain why medical swabs, sanitary napkins and other unmentionables were recently found dumped at the Mugga Lane land fill site?
MR CONNOLLY: I thank Mrs Grassby for the question. Members may have seen the front page story in yesterday's Valley View relating to the discovery by journalists from that paper of plastic bags containing, apparently, blood-smeared material. I indicated that the Government would take a very serious view of such a thing. The clinical waste legislation, which was enacted in early 1990 and which
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