Page 3970 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 16 December 1992
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Mr Stevenson: Are you praying?
MRS GRASSBY: I do not have to pray; I know.
Mr Stevenson: You have your hands close together. I thought it might be a prayer.
MRS GRASSBY: It is better than having my hands in my pockets, Mr Stevenson, as you do when you stand up and talk about X-rated movies. Mr Stevenson, you do not have any chance of getting rid of this house, believe you me. You are a one-man band, and after the next election you will not even be here, not even to play the drums or the tuba or anything else. You will be gone. The people of Canberra will not have to put up with silly nonsense, like the motion on the business paper today. It is absolutely stupid nonsense.
Mr Stevenson: That is what you said last time.
MRS GRASSBY: No, I did not say that. I knew that you would be back. There were enough nutty people out there last time, under the old system, to get you back. With the new system there will be no way of you getting back, Mr Stevenson. You should have stuck to single-member electorates. You might have been able to find enough mad people in a certain suburb to support you.
Ms Follett: Which one?
MRS GRASSBY: Which one? You are right, Rosemary. It would be hard to find one; but I am sure that there are a few, and he might be able to get them all together in one suburb so that he can represent them. I do not think that is going to happen, Mr Stevenson. It is a very sad day when this house is called on to discuss silly nonsense like this, stopping business that is important going through the house. I am very pleased that the Liberals will be supporting us on this and will not be voting for Mr Stevenson's motion. They have some commonsense; they know that there are enough people out there supporting them, people who look at the Bills that come into this house and give their views on them, instead of taking silly Dennis polls. I hope that Gary does not start running Gary polls. I do not think I could stand it.
MR STEVENSON (11.59), in reply: Madam Speaker, I believe that a reading of this debate will absolutely prove why we need to set the time in stone. I would like to thank the second speaker in the affirmative, the Attorney-General, Terry Connolly, for presenting my case so well. He was followed by the shadow Attorney-General, Gary Humphries, who made some more cogent points. Mr Connolly said that the Liberal Party had on a number of occasions rammed Bills through, or words to that effect. He made the point well. I am sure that we all agree. Is that not a reason why the nine in charge of this Assembly should not be able to do it? Of course, he omitted to mention the times when the Labor Party has done exactly the same thing, but that is understandable. He did say that if he had nine people in this Assembly he would do it.
Mr Connolly also talked about draft legislation being out in the public arena, as did Mr Wood. Let me make the point, and make it strongly, that the important time is not when Bills are talked about or ideas are tossed around; it is when the black-and-white law is placed before this Assembly. That is when people can read it and find out what is really going on. They are not always told beforehand.
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