Page 2356 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 1 November 1989
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This sort of attitude that has been revealed today does nothing to instil public confidence in the findings of committees. It makes one wonder why on earth we had committee hearings in the first place - that the best thing to do would be simply to come in, throw it on the table, have a quick debate in which our emotions rule our hearts and our hearts rule our heads, and come up with whatever we think is politically viable or acceptable at the time. That is simply not the case and it is not acceptable. So I would urge members of the Assembly to support my motion.
MR WHALAN (Minister for Industry, Employment and Education) (5.41): This is a strange sort of motion, given the fact that it is being raised in a chamber of this sort. The reality is that what we are on about here is politics, and every person in this chamber has an interest in and commitment to politics and the political view of a particular persuasion. Those of us who are in parties will have platforms which will indicate the commitment that we as a group support and adhere to. Independent members and smaller groupings may have a different range of commitments. But it does mean that we hold our views very strongly.
We saw yesterday a demonstration of the Liberal Party consistently calling for divisions when we were debating the occupational health and safety legislation. Whenever the question of a relevant union or appropriate union was mentioned in the detail stage of that legislation the Liberals called for division after division.
That caused a bit of inconvenience to us, but none of us would deny the Liberal Party its right to do that. That is very, very important. None of us would deny Liberal members the right to highlight the strength with which they hold their commitment about that aspect of the legislation. Also, I seem to recall that, when the move-on powers legislation was being debated, we in the Labor Party took a very strong stand on that issue, and we fought that legislation clause by clause. Again, we called for a division on every occasion, because we wanted to use that mechanism to highlight where we stood on the issue for our constituency. I am sure that that was part of the motivation of the Liberals when they adopted the same position in relation to occupational health and safety.
Of course, there are those of us who adopt very strong positions on matters which come before this Assembly, and probably there is nothing that demonstrates that better than the question of the introduction of fluoride to the drinking water. Some members have been concerned about a member of a committee which is actively inquiring into the question of the appropriateness of fluoridation of water being out on a public platform, in a public debate, speaking from an extremely firmly held point of view, thus demonstrating a position which would, at best, suggest that that person was less than objective when going into the committee deliberations.
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