Page 3158 - Week 15 - Thursday, 14 December 1989
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does not follow that the business of the Assembly stops. The business of the Assembly is performed very largely in these committees, and that is what we have established most conclusively over the last seven months. Yet the opposition is taking a position which will, if members persist with it, prevent that business of the Government going on. That is exactly why we put this motion forward today and it is exactly why we intended to resolve it with the opposition yesterday.
Mr Whalan: Let us sit again next week when we have had a chance to get legal advice.
MR KAINE: Mr Whalan wants to know why we do not meet next week. Mr Speaker, we are following the sitting pattern established by the previous Government in which today was to be the last meeting of the Assembly. We will shortly move a motion relating to the first day of sitting next year - the one that Mr Whalan agreed to and in connection with which he produced a sitting pattern for next year, the pattern which we are tentatively adopting. We are not changing anything.
All we have insisted upon is that we be given a reasonable time to form a government and get our machinery in place - exactly what we gave the Opposition when they took Government. But they have taken this dog-in-the-manger attitude, that we are not entitled to that courtesy. Well, Mr Speaker, I reaffirm that we intended to get the committee structure in place so that it could continue to work. There were some aspects of it in its present form that would have made it unworkable over the next two months.
I believe, and I think the Leader of the Opposition would agree with me, that it is inappropriate for the Chief Minister to chair the Public Accounts Committee. Now, if the Leader of the Opposition does not want to take on the role which the Leader of the Opposition traditionally takes on, that committee becomes unworkable for the next two months. Yet she sits there and refuses to participate. Mr Whalan says that we will not consult. We did consult - and we are prepared to consult. If the decision is not taken today, the committee structure ceases to work.
On the question of the membership, Mr Speaker, much has been made about our somehow trying to distort the membership. I simply refer the Leader of the Opposition, if she chooses to listen, to standing order 221 which is quite explicit on the composition of committees and the membership and the representation of members of this Assembly on the committees. We are complying with that provision. There is nothing inconsistent with it. Our intentions were honourable. Our intentions were decent. We wanted to pay the opposition the courtesy of discussing the matter with them. They refused.
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