Page 1582 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 19 May 1993
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If I provide an answer or an explanation, whether or not it is satisfactory, there cannot be a motion, it seems to me, so the whole thing is a nonsense.
Mrs Carnell: Would you rather we amend it to say "satisfaction"?
Mr De Domenico: Well, move an amendment to it.
MR BERRY: I am glad that you agree with me. The motion is nonsense. We all understand the politics of question time. It is fair enough for members of this Assembly to be able to interrogate the Government and to keep the pressure on it about particular issues. This motion is just part of those politics. But we have to be aware of some of the things that people get up to - the less honourable ones. They set out to bog down the Government with questions. They even then try to create the impression that there is a delay because there is a massive number of questions - leave aside the value of the questions - on the notice paper. Then we go to this sort of motion and they move to bog it down again so that they can highlight some sort of so-called inadequacy in a particular Minister's approach.
At the same time, if you listen to the Liberals, they will always be attacking the number of bureaucrats that we have answering all these questions - doing all of this administrative work instead of being out there at the sharp end delivering services - by saying, "What is the Government doing? They have all those bureaucrats sitting around answering questions".
Mr Kaine: If they cannot explain to you what they are doing, Minister, you should get rid of them.
MR BERRY: Hang on a minute. I raise a particular issue. Mr Moore asked me a very long and involved question. I am not going to discuss the - - -
Mr Moore: Is this just on the notice paper?
MR BERRY: It was about the graduate nurse employment program. It was a very long question.
Mr Moore: Yes. It took nearly a year to answer.
MR BERRY: That is right. I apologise for not answering, but it was a very long question. It ought not to have happened.
Mr Kaine: The main reason you could not answer the question was that you could not understand it, I suppose.
MR BERRY: The question is 14 points long. It is involved and it requires a lot of information. There is no question about that. I think we agree on that score. I asked my staff to keep their eye on how much time they spend answering questions. I am told that this took about 16 hours and involved about nine staff. It is not hard to imagine a range of questions that would bog down the whole department, if you really stuck to the rule - - -
Mr Kaine: We know that the Labor Party worked on that principle when they were in opposition.
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