Question Time

MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:18): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Leader of the Government a question about ministerial responsibilities.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: The minister has been given responsibility, so we are told, for industrial relations. As members would know, responsibility for all private sector industrial relations now rests in the federal arena. The minister has been given responsibility for state/local government relations—as members would be aware, there is very limited responsibility for a state government, generally relating to oversight of local government—and the gambling portfolio, which has traditionally been seen by governments as a junior portfolio.

Members would also be aware that, in the past, leaders of the government have generally held senior and important portfolio positions, such as Attorney-General, education, Treasury, planning, mining, industry, police and a variety of other portfolios. My questions are:

1. Does the minister agree with the judgement of many journalists and commentators that the reason he has been given such a lightweight collection of portfolios is that the Premier has made the judgment about him that he does not have the ability or capacity—

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: —to handle any more complicated or significant—

The PRESIDENT: You are asking for an opinion.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: —or important portfolios?

2. If the minister does not agree with that view—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: You are on the way out, Paul, so don't worry about it. You are yesterday's man. You have been shafted.

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: You were told to go. You wanted four years and you have been given a year.

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. G.E. Gago interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The honourable minister will come to order.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. G.E. Gago interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The honourable minister will come to order. I am sure the honourable minister will have an answer that will satisfy the question, but I am sure he will avoid the opinion.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: Mr President, if he does not agree with that judgement, can he explain to the chamber why he is the first leader of the government in this chamber ever to be given such a lightweight collection of portfolios by his leader?

The Hon. B.V. FINNIGAN (Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for State/Local Government Relations, Minister for Gambling) (15:20): Of course, the allocation of portfolios is a question for the Premier, and I am very happy with the portfolios that he has given me. I am happy to serve in any capacity that the Premier sees fit, and I am certainly very grateful and honoured by the confidence my colleagues have placed in me by electing me to this position.

The Hon. Mr Lucas is so predictable that he ought to just send a shadow puppet to say what he is going to say. I almost could have written this question before I even walked in today, because the Hon. Mr Lucas bowls up the same old nonsense again and again, and he contradicts himself from day to day.

For months in this chamber the Hon. Mr Lucas has been saying that I was out for your job, Mr President, or the Hon. Mr Holloway's job. It was the whip's position at one point. I was going for every job there was. He has continually referred to me as an ex-union factional boss and a heavyweight, blah, blah. He has continually gone on about my being some shadowy backroom figure who calls all the shots. Now, suddenly, overnight, I am a lightweight. 'Who's this guy? He doesn't know anything.' How do I go from being a factional hack operator, ex-union boss, heavy, etc, to a lightweight who has been given no portfolios?

It is an absolutely ridiculous line of argument for the Hon. Mr Lucas to use, and it demonstrates how bankrupt the Liberal opposition is. The fact that the Hon. Mr Lucas is opening the bowling—to use a cricket analogy, which the Hon. Mr Ridgway is fond of—demonstrates that the Liberal Party is incapable of the sort of renewal and change that the Labor government has achieved. The Liberal Party is incapable of renewal or change.

So, who is the de facto Leader of the Opposition in this state? Who is it who leads the Liberals in this state? Who do you see on television and in the paper? Is it the Hon. Mr Ridgway? Is it Isobel Redmond from another place? No: it is the Hon. Mr Lucas. He is out there every day. He is the one rolling up and opening the bowling for the Liberal Party. The best they can do is a failed treasurer, the one hangover left from the failed Olsen government—a discredited treasurer from a failed, disgraceful government that was racked by scandal and mismanagement. The one remaining senior figure from that government is the most senior person in the Liberal Party.

Well may the Hon. Mr Ridgway hang his head, as do all of the shadow ministers in the Liberal Party, because they are embarrassed and humiliated that the very best that can be done by the Liberal Party is the Hon. Mr Lucas. The Hon. Mr Lucas is the one who goes out there and does the media. He is the modern face of the Liberal Party—a man who has spent years in party office and then has been a parliamentarian for over 30 years. He is the new face of the Liberal Party. He is the failed treasurer, Mr Sale of ETSA, Mr Deficit Budget. He is the new face of the Liberal Party. The new face of the Liberal Party is the Hon. Mr Lucas. The man of the future is the man who oversaw the sale of ETSA, who never delivered a surplus budget.

The Hon. T.J. Stephens: How's your forest, Bernie? You're selling your people out; you're a loser and a jerk.

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Mr Finnigan should refrain from exciting the opposition.

The Hon. B.V. FINNIGAN: I apologise; I did not realise the Hon. Mr Stephens could not control his conduct in the chamber. It is quite an insult by the Hon. Mr Lucas to suggest that the portfolios that I manage—or indeed which any minister manages—are insignificant. He says industrial relations are not important. As far as the Hon. Mr Lucas is concerned, industrial relations are not important. The rights of public sector workers are not important. Fair workplaces are not important. Workers compensation is not important. Public holidays are not important; they are insignificant. Local governments—councils—are insignificant and unimportant. The services delivered by local councils every day in rubbish collection, libraries, social welfare—all the services councils provide—are not important as far as the Hon. Mr Lucas is concerned; they are just nothing. They are not significant.

When it comes to gambling, we all know that the Hon. Mr Lucas is just a mouthpiece in here for the gambling industry, like his good friend, the Hon. Mr Stephens. They are the Cheech and Chong of the gambling industry. The Hon. Mr Lucas always toes the line of the gaming industry and the Hon. Mr Stephens the racing industry. Here he is saying that the ministerial portfolio of gambling is not significant. He does not care about problem gamblers or about the regulatory framework governing poker machines. We know that as far as the Hon. Mr Lucas is concerned it should be open slather; everyone should be able to do whatever they want when it comes to liquor licensing, gaming and all the rest, because he thinks it is not important. He does not care. As far as the Hon. Mr Lucas is concerned, what councils do does not matter, issues affecting gambling do not matter and workers rights and compensation do not matter. That is a pretty disgraceful attitude.

How extraordinary that the Hon. Mr Lucas has also spoken about past figures in this chamber, including the Hons Messrs Blevins, Cornwall and Sumner. I ask what the Hon. Mr Sumner would have to say about Hon. Mr Lucas. I am sure we can all agree on one thing, and that is that he would have no kind words to say about the Hon. Mr Lucas, who now holds him up as an example of someone who should be emulated by me or any minister. Indeed, Messrs Cornwall, Blevins and Sumner were fine ministers and made a great contribution in their time, which was of course some time ago, which reflects that the Hon. Mr Lucas is a lifetime politician. He has never really done anything else. He is not capable of doing anything else, and how extraordinary it is that I should cop this criticism from members opposite.

Who do we have? We have a hereditary peer up the back, a career politician and staffer, two staffers down the front—the Chris Pyne faction—a couple of people who could not get into the House of Assembly and the Hon. Jing Lee who, to be fair, I think is the only person there who has any sort of representation beyond being a political hack of the Liberal Party who simply managed to do the numbers to get here. How absurd that the Hon. Mr Lucas, of all people—a failed Treasurer, a hangover from a past failed government, a man who has usurped the Leader of the Opposition in another place because, despite what his colleagues want, he has no confidence in her abilities—holds himself out as the de facto leader of the opposition. The Hon. Mr Lucas is the face of the modern Liberal Party—

The Hon. T.J. Stephens interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order, the Hon. Mr Stephens!

The Hon. B.V. FINNIGAN: —and that says everything. The best they can do, the best they can bowl up, is the Hon. Mr Lucas, yesterday's man, a shadow of his former shadow.