Page 3734 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 9 December 1992
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"You are all too slow, slow, slow, slow. We have only three pieces of legislation on the notice paper to consider". You can have one or you can have the other, but it is pretty difficult to look yourself in the eye and say both things within a 24-hour period. However, nothing is beyond this local Liberal Party.
I guess that, in the handbook of how to conduct yourself in opposition, the two never-fail criticisms of the government are either that you are doing things too fast or that you are doing things too slowly. It does take real talent to run both lines at the same time. While this MPI may have been a quite credible critique of a government before last night, your performance last night really makes it laughable. You threw out a piece of first priority legislation, legislation that has been in the pipeline for years. Mrs Carnell was referring to a health matter. Well, there was one of them. It has been circulated since March, and you threw it out on the basis that you are all overworked, you could not possibly consider the legislation, there was not enough time to look at it. Now, today, you are saying that there is not enough legislation being brought forward. It is really pretty laughable, and it destroys any credibility this Opposition would claim to have.
This Government continues to bring forward significant reformist legislation. As the Chief Minister indicated, the legislative program is an initiative that most State parliaments do not have. Most State governments do not give oppositions and independent members the courtesy of looking at the advance program, but we do, and it is a quite sensible course of action. The legislative program is not, under this Government, nor was it under your Government, etched in stone, as the Chief Minister said. It is a flexible document which changes over time - a bit like Fightback, really. It is absurd to criticise this Government on the basis of some sort of numeric calculation of what proportion of our first priority Bills we brought in.
In any event, it does not matter. When we do bring in a first priority Bill, when we put it before you, when there are only three other government Bills on the notice paper, what do you do? You say, "We cannot possibly debate that. We have not had time to look at it. We are all overworked", and you send it off to a committee. What would be the appropriate rate of serving Bills up to you lot? Who knows? One every three months? One every four months?
Mr De Domenico: Get them right, though. When you get them right, we support them.
MR CONNOLLY: You had not even looked at that one. This is an MPI full of cute little debating points, full of nice turns of phrase, straight out of the Opposition too slow, too slow, too slow handbook, but sadly inconsistent with the too fast, too fast, too fast critique you gave us last night in relation to the adoption legislation. You really have to make up your minds what your strategy is. You cannot run both critiques at once.
MR CORNWELL (4.03): Perhaps I could get this matter back on track and remind members that we are talking about the Government's failure to implement its legislative program, not why the Adoption Bill was not passed last night. As Mr Humphries said, this Government really has an appalling failure rate in terms of the introduction of its legislative program. Mr Humphries outlined the percentage of that failure rate. We are not talking about just first priorities, Mr Connolly; we are talking about the entire first, second and third priority legislation for each of the Ministers.
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