Page 1395 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 12 May 1993
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MR STEVENSON: Thank you, Madam Speaker. We have had self-government for four years and we had an interesting anniversary date yesterday, 11 May. People talk about our polls. I have suggested that the last and final thing people can do if they do not agree with them is to do their own. I know, as everyone here knows, that the parties do their own polling. This has relevance to the debate because they talk about whether or not we should follow the will of the people. It is one thing to conduct polling so that you find out what the people's concerns are and then can use them in a soapsuds advertisement to try to get people to buy your product.
It is an altogether different thing to say, "We are genuinely looking for what the people of this community want us to do, and when they tell us that we will do that". If only the Liberal Party would do that and get back to the old Liberal principles of long gone years - not as long as the Labor principles - when they represented the people. It is interesting that the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the Democrats, all these parties, start out with the idea of representing the people, but what happens? Let me conclude with a statement by Edmund Burke in a letter to the Sheriffs in Bristol on 3 April 1777:
If you ask me what a free government is, I answer that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so, and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.
Question put:
That the motion (Mr Stevenson's) be agreed to.
The Assembly voted -
AYES, 1 NOES, 16
Mr Stevenson Mr Berry
Mrs Carnell
Mr Connolly
Mr Cornwell
Mr De Domenico
Ms Ellis
Ms Follett
Mrs Grassby
Mr Humphries
Mr Kaine
Mr Lamont
Ms McRae
Mr Moore
Ms Szuty
Mr Westende
Mr Wood
Question so resolved in the negative.
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