Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 9 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 2709 ..

Mr Osborne: Just withdraw it.

MR QUINLAN: I will withdraw it, happily. However, by some accident of principle, the Osborne Group, who sit together and work together but who are still Independents, earn more. They have a greater staff allocation. For that I congratulate them.

I congratulate Michael Moore on the accoutrements of ministership that he has and that he obviously enjoys. But you cannot congratulate the Government on this particular exercise with Mr Kaine. It is vindictive and all those things that have already been said, and I am not going to labour it any longer. I just want to refer to a point that the Chief Minister was making and remade during her speech this morning when she said that the Clerk of this Assembly would be left with a hole in his budget.

I think this has been alluded to already, but I just want it repeated. As I understand it, there is a departmental budget. That is not affected. There is a Territorial budget, which would be affected to the massive sum of $20,000 or $30,000, and that would not leave the operation of this Assembly with a hole in its budget. I think it is important that that misinformation be corrected.

I would finally like to say that it would appear from Mr Moore's summation that this ain't about principle; never is. It is about power. It just so happens that Mr Kaine is an individual whose support the Government cannot rely upon and does not particularly need and who is therefore not paid a fair allowance compared to his counterparts in this place.

MR OSBORNE (4.07): Mr Deputy Speaker, that was a very interesting addition to the debate from Mr Quinlan. There are a couple of things that I would like to say. I think what Mr Quinlan finished off with was interesting. It would appear that the Government can rely on Ms Tucker's vote in the Assembly because she receives the same allocation as Mr Rugendyke and I. I am sure that Ms Carnell is very pleased to hear that. Mr Kaine has certainly indicated since he left the Liberal Party that he is an Independent. He has voted against the Government on many occasions. So there are certainly some grounds for him to receive more funding.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I had an amendment, which I will not move, because it appears that Mr Kaine does have the numbers on this. But let me just give members a short history lesson. In the four years that I have been in this Assembly, I have never supported a motion which has forced the Government to spend more money. I have never forced the Executive to spend money one way or the other. The only thing that has ever come close to it has been the issue of the Downer Preschool; but we did not force the Minister to spend any more money there. They are just going to have to reallocate their resources in another way. The conversation I had with the Minister at the time indicated that he was quite happy to do it anyway.

As I said, over the four years that I have been here, I have never supported a motion which has forced the Government to spend an extra dollar. So I do have a problem with forcing Ms Carnell to make more funds available for the Assembly. What I am prepared to do, though, Mr Deputy Speaker, is to give up some of my allocation to go towards Mr Kaine. That was the main thrust of my amendment. I will give you a history lesson

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .