Page 2463 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 1993
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Madam Speaker, I find this response from Mr Wood totally unsatisfactory. The Assembly, not the Government, instituted a 30-day rule in relation to questions on the notice paper. This question has been sitting there since before the recess. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think the Assembly rose on 18 June. There has been ample time for this question to be replied to. I might add that I have received numerous responses to other questions that were on the notice paper at that time.
Mr Wood: From Education.
MR CORNWELL: From Education, from Mr Connolly's department, from Mr Berry - I think from all Ministers. I therefore find your flippant response, "In due course", quite unsatisfactory, Mr Wood. I would like to know when I may receive a response to a quite legitimate question that I have placed on the notice paper. I have acted fairly because the response requires detailed figures, et cetera. I believe that I have acted more than fairly. I have not asked you a question without notice and then sought to ask you to respond again without notice. I have asked you, on notice, to respond to a reasonable question. I do not believe that your reply now, "In due course", is at all satisfactory, and it certainly is not in the spirit of the 30-day rule that this Assembly has instituted.
Mr Berry: Not everybody agrees with the rule.
MR CORNWELL: That is tough luck, Mr Berry, because the Assembly has agreed to it.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (3.09): Madam Speaker, my answer was not flippant. I am sure that Mr Cornwell will agree that, in general, we have a very harmonious relationship with respect to questions. Before the 30-day rule was applied I think the two departments I administer, more than any others - perhaps I should not make comparisons - replied to all questions in pretty good time. I had fewer questions outstanding than was the average. We do set out to answer all questions. This is a question where, clearly, you do not just punch a computer and the answer spits out. Mr Cornwell asks a great number of questions and, with one exception, we responded in good time. My answer related particularly to the notice paper I saw yesterday, with a further 140 questions or thereabouts, some requiring an extraordinary level of detail and designed for, I think, a particular purpose. Some that Mrs Carnell asked, I think, were answered, but perhaps not in quite that detail, just recently. I know that I churned out some answers about boards not very long ago and there we see it again.
The Opposition is entitled to ask questions. I think that they ought to have a measure of responsibility and good sense. I am not quite sure I see that in yesterday's notice paper. This is an answer that is taking some time. Every other answer has come through. The Education Department has been working extraordinarily hard recently on budget matters and other things, and the answer will come, I think it is fair to say, in due course. I think my record should give you some indication of my sincerity.
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