Page 47 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 23 May 1989
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Rally was prepared to do. For this, Mr Kaine and the Liberal Party members deserve the gratitude of the ACT community.
The fact of the matter is that there is a Government with a formal leader and there is an Opposition, and that there should be a formal leader of that opposition makes good sense to me - and what better leader than Mr Kaine. It is clear from examination of the policies espoused by Mr Kaine during the recent, or should I say not so recent, election campaign that he and the Liberal Party had clearly set their sights on being in opposition. I for one was happy to cast my vote in his favour to formalise that position.
Accordingly, I say that this matter raised by Mr Collaery and the Residents Rally is not a matter of public importance at all, but really a matter of private inconsequence. This Assembly should proceed to deal with matters of relevance to the affairs of the Territory.
MR HUMPHRIES (3.55): Mr Speaker, I want to rise first of all to support the comments made by the Leader of the Opposition, as he is, and the Leader of the No Self Government Party. It is a great pity that this matter of public importance being discussed today has displaced matters of somewhat greater importance to this Territory.
The particular matter which I had raised and put before you, Mr Speaker, and which would have been discussed had this not been put forward, was the crying need in this Territory for adequate and immediate protection of heritage assets in this place.
It is a great pity that this trivial, inconsequential matter should have come forward to displace that other more important topic. I think we are all the poorer for it, and it certainly does not create a very good impression of the ACT's first Assembly that it should spend time bickering over who should be the Leader of the Opposition, rather than discussing matters of greater importance to the Territory, including the state of its heritage assets.
The matter of public importance discloses some considerable ignorance of the political processes. Despite much discussion by the Residents Rally of historical precedent and tradition, I have yet to see any convincing precedent cited which would convince me that there ought to be some variation of the course of action the Assembly adopted on 11 May. The fact is that the only precedent that could be cited to us was some 10-year-old Saskatchewan precedent, which I do not believe is convincing enough.
The Residents Rally has suggested that the election of the Leader of the Opposition is a highly exceptional course of action. Of course it is. Nobody on this side of the chamber, at least from this point onwards, would disagree with that. But electing a Chief Minister, as the Chief Minister herself has pointed out, is highly exceptional. I
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