Page 2308 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 June 1994
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MR MOORE (10.47): Madam Speaker, I can give you two good reasons why we can go ahead today - one is sitting there and one is standing here. Madam Speaker, it seems to me that if we allowed this to go on for a couple of months we would have a repeat of this same debate. No matter how much time the Liberals were given, they would come down with exactly the same kinds of arguments in order to delay this Bill because they seek to ensure that a Liberal approach to public sector reform is part of this Bill. I have no problem with considering a Liberal approach to public sector reform; but I would like to do that later, and we can do it later. We are in an appropriate position now to proceed with this Bill.
The amendments that have been put on the table this morning are largely the same, except that now they are in a much neater form than we had before and they are in order. Mrs Carnell talked about making an amendment to an amendment. She knows from that round table discussion that it is an area on which she is going to lose. It is okay for her. I still respect her right to put those amendments.
Mrs Carnell: Thank you. I said at that round table discussion that I would move them.
MR MOORE: She indicated that she would be moving them. So she should. She should try it on. The necessity to draft an amendment to the amendment does not require a great deal of effort. I believe that we still can proceed and we still ought to proceed with this debate now, and we should continue it in an orderly manner.
MR CORNWELL (10.49): Madam Speaker, I rise briefly to take issue with some of Mr Moore's remarks. I agree with Mrs Carnell that this is a hotchpotch. I believe that Mr Moore is, in fact, abdicating his responsibility as an elected member in being prepared to accept at face value a series of amendments. Mr Moore will not take issue with me on this because I am sure that he will accept that it is our duty to read these amendments that arrived only this morning. They may well be, Mr Moore, as you say, simply tidied up amendments; but it is our responsibility to make sure that that is the case.
Mr Kaine: They are not, however.
MR CORNWELL: My colleague Mr Kaine is questioning even that statement - that they are simply tidied up amendments. I do not believe that we are accepting our responsibilities as elected representatives, Mr Moore, if we are prepared to accept at face value the views of the Government on this matter. We have an overriding responsibility to make sure. This Government has had a ham-fisted approach to this whole question of amendments. As Mrs Carnell said, my papers arrived in my letterbox at approximately 8.45 on Friday night. That was hardly the close of business. What was promised for Monday, as Mrs Carnell said, arrived on Wednesday morning, virtually minutes before we were due to debate this important legislation. How can we possibly do justice to it?
The Government has had ample time to bring this forward. It has had years to do it. I put it to you, Madam Speaker, that the only reason why the Government wants this Bill to go forward and to go through by 1 July is to salve the Chief Minister's ego. She said that it was to go through on 1 July and therefore the rest of this Assembly is obliged to click its heels and fall in behind her on this date. We in the Opposition do not believe that that is the correct way to approach this. We know that there are unions who,
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