Page 2944 - Week 13 - Thursday, 23 November 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
that has been put will be passed and the Government will cease to be the Government.
However, for him to suggest that what we on the opposition side are doing is in any way a gag motion is quite absurd. I suppose in a way you could say it is the ultimate gag, in the sense that the matters that remain on the notice paper are essentially the Government's business, and after we adjourn today that business becomes irrelevant because there will be a new government and there will be new business on the agenda. So, in effect, it is the ultimate gag in terms of what the Government has put on this notice paper.
For him to talk at length, however, about the importance of all these matters that are on the notice paper puts a rather false note into the debate, because, Mr Speaker, the Deputy Chief Minister knows well that most of these matters would probably not be debated in the normal course of events before the house went into recess on 14 December anyway. They were certainly not listed for debate today, as he implied. The only matters listed for debate today are the matters on the green daily paper. The only one that we have not got to is an item that the Deputy Chief Minister intended to add to it. It is not already on the daily paper; he intended to add it to it. That is the Civic Square project selection procedure.
So for him to argue that the opposition is in any way gagging the debate of business that was set down for business today is of course a spurious claim and quite wrong.
Mr Moore: Rubbish, we are halfway through the transport strategy.
MR KAINE: I suppose Mr Moore is quite distraught also because he was sidling up alongside a government and now he has discovered that that government is about to disappear. I can understand why he is a bit distraught too, Mr Speaker.
I submit that not only is there no truth in what the Deputy Chief Minister was saying about applying the gag but it is most appropriate that further debate on the Government business should cease because, as I have said, once the Government ceases to exist on the next sitting day of this Assembly, it will not be Government business. The new Government will introduce its own program and that will be the matter on the agenda for debate.
Of course, a lot of the matters that are on there will be taken up by the new Government because they are matters of some concern. So the present Government, which will soon be the Opposition, will have every opportunity to debate the matters because they will remain on the agenda. They are matters that are not going to go away simply because the Government changes. So there is no truth whatsoever to
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .