Page 28 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 13 February 1990
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EXECUTIVE DEPUTIES
Discussion of Matter of Public Importance
MR SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Ms Follett proposing that a matter of public importance be submitted to the Assembly for discussion, namely:
The role and cost of Executive Deputies, their relationship to the Executive Government and the legislature, and the implications of these positions for the Westminster principle of the separation of powers.
MS FOLLETT (Leader of the Opposition) (3.48): Mr Speaker, I wish to take the opportunity of using the first debate on a matter of public importance to raise the issue of Executive Deputies because they represent so neatly all the things that are wrong with this Government.
I believe that the appointments of Executive Deputies have demonstrated the very weakness of the leadership of Mr Kaine and they have shown up the basic mistrust between the different groups in this fairly ramshackle coalition. They also demonstrate a contempt for the community which even you, Mr Speaker, have admitted is confused by the notion. Much more obviously, as we have seen today, they also show a complete contempt for this Assembly by making the Assembly subservient to the Executive and by attempting to pervert the independence of the Assembly's committees.
First and foremost, Mr Speaker, the creation of the Executive Deputies shows that no-one is really in control of this Government. It shows up the weakness of Mr Kaine who has given in to a fairly twisted form of Mr Collaery's so-called collegiate system, the much-touted collegiate system, and it shows further that Mr Kaine was so weak in negotiating his coalition that he had to give a job to everybody. He had to buy the loyalty of the members of his Government with jobs for the boys and the girls and with the kind of grandiloquent and pretentious titles that we have seen, in exchange for every vote he received as Chief Minister.
If you are in any doubt as to the nature of the titles, you might have a look at them. I notice, for instance, that Mr Stefaniak, when he is not calling himself the Minister for sport, is known as the Executive Deputy Assisting the Attorney-General/Minister for Housing and Community Services, on Police and Justice and Sport, Recreation and Racing Matters. Mrs Nolan is now the Executive Deputy Assisting the Minister for Finance and Urban Services on Tourism, Business, Employment, Transport and Rural Matters.
Mr Speaker, they may well rejoice in those titles, and they may be gratified that their personal titles take up no less than a full column inch in the newspaper without anything attaching to them, but I put it to you that they have
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