Page 4186 - Week 13 - Thursday, 25 November 1993
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What is the date from which Mr Wood apparently is required not to use money for the purposes of reducing - whatever that means - his number of teachers? Madam Speaker, if members were seriously legislating and seriously considering the implications of this unprecedented type of adjustment to an Appropriation Bill, those questions would cause them great concern. Those questions would cause members to say, "This is a foolish amendment and we will not proceed with it at this time". But, as I say, if members are wanting to make a puerile political stunt, what I have said will cause no concern. They will continue to giggle and cackle and carry on as they did while I was asking those questions, and they will do it anyway. Madam Speaker, it may well be, as we try to find out what this means - if it is possible, if it is capable of having a legal meaning and some form of legal effect on the operations of government - that we may have to come back into this place in the next sittings, or in some sittings next year, and bring before this chamber legislation to try at least to make some sense out of this.
Members who were here during the last Assembly would well recall the famous back-of-the-envelope amendments that were being circulated in those bizarre long sitting hours on the planning legislation. Those amendments, which were belted out, which were vague and meaningless, have caused us considerable practical difficulties and have taken up considerable amounts of the time of this Assembly in fixing them up. I suspect, if members are determined to proceed with this political stunt and pass this, that we will be back at some future stage trying to make sense of this vague and meaningless provision. Some members have stood up here in the past and piously said, "You should not be springing amendments on us; you should not be springing on us significant and important pieces of legislation that cannot be understood". If those members vote in favour of this their commitment to principle is severely questioned.
Mrs Carnell: We told you three weeks ago that we were going to do this.
MR CONNOLLY: You said three weeks ago that you would do something, but in your usual cheap political manner you did not give us the courtesy of circulating the amendment. We knew that you were going to pull a political stunt. You had made that clear. We knew that you were going to do something, but what you have done, we suspect, is probably meaningless. We suspect that this actually has no effect or meaning at all. On the other hand, Madam Speaker, it could have fundamental effect, to the point that, if a school in the non-government sector wishes to reduce its number of teachers by one, Mr Wood, who has appropriated the money to allow that to happen, is in breach of the law, and that would be an extraordinary proposition indeed. You would agree that that would be an extraordinary proposition. We just do not know.
Debate interrupted.
ADJOURNMENT
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! It being 4.30 pm, I propose the question:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Mr Berry: I require the question to be put forthwith without debate.
Question resolved in the negative.
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