Page 2971 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 16 October 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Chief Minister!
MR STANHOPE: to actually convince his colleagues they had absolutely no hope—
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Chief Minister, resume your seat.
MR STANHOPE: with Mr Smyth of winning the election.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Chief Minister, resume your seat or I will have to stand up. Chief Minister, you are straying from the procedural nature of Mr Corbell’s motion. You were on track there for a little while, but you have now strayed. We are debating, surely, the procedural matter here.
MR STANHOPE: And that is what I went to.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Please stick to that line. Chief Minister, you have the floor.
MR STANHOPE: I have finished the cogent argument.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (5.12): I will just say a few words, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Chief Minister has said that we are taking up the government’s time and that they want to debate certain things. Predominantly, this program is the wish of the government of the day. It was the wish of the government today to lead off with a report on working families presented by Mr Gentleman. I fail to understand how the opposition, in wishing to continue that process and therefore resisting an attempt to shut down debate, is doing anything other than adhering to today’s program.
I understand that the Chief Minister was not happy about the procedural motion that disrupted this particular program this morning. I am afraid that essentially it is an item that has been placed on the program with the full acquiescence of the government and it is an item that obviously members here want to speak to. Mrs Burke is ready to make some remarks, I want to speak about the matters and I would be thrilled to hear what Mr Gentleman has got to say in relation to his extraordinarily long assignment chairing this committee on an issue that is running headlines in Australia as we speak.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.13): It is obvious that the government is extraordinarily sensitive about the whole nature of this report. But we have to remember, as Mr Mulcahy has just pointed out, that this item of business was put on the program today with the compliance and agreement of the manager of government business. That is what he does. He orders the program. Obviously he needs to take a Bex and have a good lie down because somewhere in the course of the afternoon he has found that the program is inconvenient for him.
All that this Assembly is doing, apart from having its time wasted by Mr Corbell, is going through the program as it was set out by the manager of government business. Suddenly the manager of government business is having a hissy fit about this. This is precisely because the government is embarrassed by the fact that Mr Gentleman has
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .