Page 3957 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 16 December 1992
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This Assembly has demonstrated that it will look at each Bill on its merits. In the case of the adoption law, after quite heated debate in this place and agitation in the public forums, this Assembly decided that it wanted to refer that to a committee. On the other hand, in a couple of measures we have exampled, including one passed this morning, this Assembly has taken a measure that was introduced last week and passed it this week. In every case, members, it is up to you individually, it is up to every one of us, to decide the speed at which we pass Bills. This Assembly has demonstrated that it will look at legislation and make that decision.
No ramming through of legislation, Mr Stevenson, can occur in this Assembly. It is simply not a factor that can occur, given the make-up of the Assembly. To attempt to change the standing orders to apply the straitjacket you propose would cause significant delays to the advancement of public business or would force us to use the ruse of urgency motions. All but one of the examples I have given where this Assembly has decided to allow a Bill through with only a week's or a couple of weeks' notice are Bills that you would be stretching it to describe as urgent. They were sensible measures of reform to public administration that members were comfortable to debate, having acquainted themselves with the issues fairly briefly, having taken whatever briefing they wanted; but they were not measures that fell within the test of an urgency motion.
Mr Stevenson, you really almost have to acknowledge that if your measure were to pass you would be forcing us to make a farce of the process of an urgency motion, and that would not be in anyone's interest. Again, I say to the Liberal Party: If you are going to get into highfalutin rhetoric about the importance of lots of time for consultation and having two or three months for matters to be fully debated, you really have to look hard at yourselves. In the example of the 13 Bills that were passed in the two sitting weeks in 1990, just two of those 13 were major measures that made significant changes to the public administration of this Territory. The Territory Owned Corporations Bill and the Health Services Bill both went through this Assembly process without the sort of straitjacket Mr Stevenson is proposing. You can hardly support Mr Stevenson's proposal and justify your actions when you were last in government.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (11.07): Mr Connolly used an interesting ploy to debate this motion, not by debating the motion but by setting up a straw man and then attacking the Liberals on the basis of his own straw man. He talked about the quick-quick-slow-slow policy of the Liberals. He obviously never learnt to do what in my day was called the modern waltz; it was slow-slow-quick-quick-slow. You obviously do not have much rhythm, Mr Connolly. We know that, when it comes to this sort of thing, for the Labor Party it is one step forward and five steps back, because the trade unions or some other lobby group tell them that what they did was wrong and so they back away.
It was an interesting ploy. Mr Connolly said, "If you, the Liberal Opposition, are going to support this motion, then you are wrong". Then he spent 10 minutes trying to demolish the Liberal Party. He would have been much more persuasive if he had actually addressed the motion Mr Stevenson put to the Assembly rather than making this into some sort of political debate between the Labor Government and the Liberal Opposition. There is no debate, and the reason there is no debate is that the Liberal Party in opposition does not support this motion either. So, your straw man was nothing but a straw man.
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