Page 3484 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 September 1991
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On that basis, it was quite appropriate for the Assembly to adjourn debate on those Bills until a later date, so that the community could have time to consider them very carefully. After all, as everyone in this Assembly acknowledges, they are very important pieces of legislation. If we are going to have a government that claims that they are consultative, it is important that they do that and not just talk about it. That is what we seem to be getting from across the chamber here, more and more, rather than real community consultation. It is Clayton's consultation.
Mrs Nolan: It is plastic.
MR JENSEN: It is Clayton's consultation or plastic consultation, as my colleague Mrs Nolan has indicated. As far as I am concerned, Mr Deputy Speaker, it was quite appropriate, because of the slackness and idleness of the Government opposite, to defer those Bills until the community could conduct a proper assessment of them.
Legislation Program
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (4.09): My response to Mr Connolly's intemperate outburst is pretty much along the same lines as that of Mr Jensen. It is quite clear that this Government is in great trouble with its so-called legislative program. Almost all of the Bills that they have brought forward so far, if not all of them, were Bills that the Alliance Government started off months ago. Since they cannot get any of their own business up, they are using ours. They are going to run out of that reservoir pretty soon and they are going to have to start producing some of their own legislation.
To present legislation like the guardianship legislation and expect the Assembly to seriously debate it five days later is a nonsense. Mr Connolly knows it. If we had attempted to do that when we were in government, we would never have heard the end of it. They are forced to do this because they are not generating any business of their own. They have been in government now for over three months and they have not yet brought forward a decent Bill that comes out of their own energy and their own constructive thinking.
I am wondering how long it is going to be. I am wondering whether we are going to see one before we go into recess for the next election. I very much doubt that we will. The Bills that we have seen, as Mr Jensen says, show that this sham community consultation that the Labor Party keeps talking about is no more than that. It is just a sham.
Mr Jensen gave one example. The land tax Bill is another. We are expected to debate that. We tried to find out the ramifications of the land tax Bill. When we talked to people like the Real Estate Institute, we discovered that
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