Page 4668 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 7 December 1994
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The final point that I would like to make is that one thing I value very highly in this Assembly is the diversity of backgrounds and experience that various members of this Assembly bring to this chamber. I think it would be a great pity if the composition of this Assembly became restricted to a few people from particular backgrounds. One of the strengths of our Assembly and of our democracy is that we have such a range of people with various experience who come into politics and who seek to make a contribution to the life of the community.
MR BERRY (Manager of Government Business) (11.36), in reply: This motion, as I said at the outset, is about principle, and the people who were most nervous about it were the Liberals. They, of course, stooped to ridicule to try to kick up a bit of a smokescreen about it. The fact is that it is an issue of principle; and it is whether you support your full-time dedication to the duties here, or whether you have a different position which says that you can be involved as much as you like in some other business, trade or profession.
I do not believe Mrs Carnell when she says that she goes to her pharmacy for nothing. Why would you own a business if it was for nothing? I think that that is a lot of nonsense. You seem to be the one most sensitive about this issue. It was not aimed at you; it was aimed as an issue of principle. But you are the one who seems to have the biggest guilt complex. I heard you say that you do a lot of hard work here, and so you should; you are the Leader of the Opposition and you get paid a lot of money to do the job. It is the same with the Ministers here. They do a lot because they get paid a lot of money to do a lot of work. They do a lot of work; there is no question about that. I would raise a question about Dennis, but backbenchers generally work hard as well.
Mr Stevenson: Do not be unkind, Wayne.
MR BERRY: As for Mr Stevenson, it is very hard to find him in the ACT. I do not know how he can be representing the people of the ACT when he is in Sydney, Chinchilla, north-western Victoria and so on. How can he claim to be doing his duty? I am not surprised that he would get up and oppose this motion, because he would, I suspect, be exposed. I am a little bit surprised by the Independents. I would have thought that they would be supportive of this principle, given the facts; but events in recent weeks have not put them in a good light, so I am not surprised that they are not terribly enamoured of Labor Party propositions.
Members will remember a former Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Whalan, who left this place. He left it because he could not conduct a business as well as work in here. He returned to his business affairs. I think he expressed the view that there were possibilities of a conflict of interest and it was not a course that he wanted to take. Mr Westende left this place and went back to his business. Fair enough; that was his choice. That was a choice that they made. Despite all the noise that has been made around the place, ridicule is a very poor weapon. Ridicule is a very poor weapon when it comes to discussion of these issues of principle, and every one of you who used that approach showed the shallowness of your contribution to the debate. The fact is that the community out there expects all of us to make a full contribution to the place. They do not expect us to accept the money that we are paid and to support principles that would allow people to do those sorts of things.
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