Mrs HICKEY - 1997-12-02
There has been a fair amount of hilarity in the Chamber today. However, the issues that we have been asking questions about are in fact very serious. Despite his denials, the Chief Minister knows that the Deputy Chief Minister participated in a breach of New South Wales law. The Chief Minister has seen his deputy demean and ridicule Territory workers, especially firemen. The Chief Minister knows his deputy is the talk of the Territory and that nobody believes his blustering explanations. Will the Chief Minister agree now that he will sack his deputy?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I am still trying to work out why the opposition has not sacked the Leader of the Opposition - ‘unfit to govern’, ‘not capable of leading’. This preoccupation with a matter that I consider to be a complete farce, when there are important issues to be tackled - and we have touched on a number in this Chamber this morning ...
Mr Bailey: You do not think a minister breaking the law and lying is an issue?
Mr STONE: I will come back to that. At least, I have had the nous to make inquiries of the New South Wales police, and I do not believe that the opposition has.
Issues that have been raised here this morning - for example, the current mosquito plague - are very important matters. The review of Aboriginal land rights is important. The question that was asked of me by the member for Nelson on freehold title ...
Ms Martin: Was a load of rubbish.
Mr STONE: The member for Fannie Bay says that it was a load of rubbish. Therein lies the reason why the Labor Party sits on that side of the Chamber. An article that appeared in the Bulletin of 9 September 1997 was worth reading. It was written by Graham Richardson, that great number-cruncher and icon of the Australian Labor Party. He had this to say:
The Labor Party in the Northern Territory has every right to feel desperate. I acted as the ALP campaign director for the first
elections in the Territory in 1974. Although Labor failed to win one seat, I did not regard the experience as a personal failure.
Labor, as a party, was hard to find. None of the candidates was suitable to act as leader ...
Mr TOYNE: A point of order, Madam Speaker! Standing order 67 says that answers must be relevant to the question. The Chief Minister’s response is not relevant to the question.
Mr STONE: Speaking to the point of order, Madam Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition started her question by chiding me for not treating the issue that she has currently been running as a serious one. I am simply highlighting that there are serious issues, and I am doing that in response to the Leader of the Opposition’s preamble to her question.
Mr BAILEY: Madam Speaker, speaking to the point of order, it is quite clear that the Chief Minister is doing no such thing. He is reading comments on an election that occurred more than 20 years ago. Quite clearly, he is not dealing with the issue of the seriousness of the allegations against his Deputy Chief Minister ...
Mr Stone: What allegations?
Mr BAILEY: That he has lied in this Chamber and that he went interstate and participated in a breach of New South Wales law. The Chief Minister has been asked what action he intends to take in relation to that. If he thinks that this is related to the question, that is rubbish.
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Madam SPEAKER: As all honourable members know, the basic rule for answers is that the nature of the reply lies at the discretion of the minister.
Mr Bailey: It has still to be relevant.
Mr Stone: And this is relevant.
Madam SPEAKER: It is still at the discretion of the minister.
Mr STONE: This is relevant, Madam Speaker. I will read on:
Labor as a party was hard to find. Not one of the candidates was suitable to act as leader. A non-candidate read the official policy
speech at the campaign launch.
Ms Martin: How long ago was this?
Mr STONE: This is 1974.
Mr Bailey: This is 1974! That is how relevant it is.
Mr STONE: To continue:
Several actual candidates were full-on alcoholics, and it has to be said that Labor then got the result it deserved. In 1997, it would seem
things have not improved all that much.
Mr Reed: There you go - it is relevant.
Mr STONE: There is the relevance, and that is what your own Labor colleagues think. The Leader of the Opposition got to her feet and asked why this was being treated with such hilarity?’ I will tell her - it is hilarious. I think it is a joke. I am not the least bit persuaded by anything that the Leader of the Opposition or the rabble that follow her have had to say on this issue. As I said last week, it was like being savaged by a dead sheep. That is how effective they are. There are important issues facing the Territory, yet this is their biggest issue. Who are these people? Are they the thought police or something? Where are they coming from?
Mr Bailey: Who are you trying to sue in the media, Shane?
Mr STONE: I will pick up that interjection. I will come back to it because I want to finish on that note.
Members interjecting.
Mr Bailey interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Member for Wanguri, cease your interjections.
Mr STONE: I do not tolerate lies, Madam Speaker ...
Mr Bailey: So why do you tolerate ...
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Mr Bailey: So why do you tell them - always?
Mr STONE: ... and I always fight them. A number of allegations have been made here. It has been asserted that the Deputy Chief Minister broke the law.
Mrs Hickey: No, he participated in an illegal act.
Mr STONE: Let us pick up that interjection. ‘No, he participated in an illegal act’. The inquiries of my office to the New South Wales police today leave it quite unclear as to whether there was any illegal act. I believe it is typical of the sloppiness of the Labor Party that members opposite would slavishly pick up a newspaper and say that, if it is in the press, it must be right. Of course, the first thing a sensible person would do would be to find these people in Sydney, to pick up the phone and ask them. We did, and surprise, surprise! They said they had no knowledge of the matter other than media reports that were being passed to them. If something wrong has been done, I am sure the New South Wales police are quite capable of walking up the street from their little police station in Kings Cross and making their own inquiries. Certainly, they do not need some fellow sitting in Darwin to give them information.
The opposition may think that this is a very serious matter. Its members thrive on this kind of muckraking and guttersniping. They have had a crack at me because I go out for a drink with my mate and have a good night out. I hear the comments back. I will tell them how grubby they are. They have even organised people to ring media outlets and make allegations. That is their style of politics. We know exactly what they get up to. Let me tell them that it simply rolls over the top of me. I do not really care.
Members interjecting.
Page 59
Mr ELFERINK: A point of order, Madam Speaker! Because the people of the Northern Territory gave us such a large mandate, we have to share this ...
Madam SPEAKER: Order! What is your point of order?
Mr ELFERINK: The interjections make it very difficult to hear the Chief Minister.
Madam SPEAKER: I agree, but that is not a point of order. I ask opposition members to allow the Chief Minister to complete his answer. I also ask the Chief Minister to stop being so provocative and get on with it.
Mr STONE: Madam Speaker, I am just a pussy cat. Even members opposite have been laughing along this morning. How can they, with any credibility, say they have this earth-shattering issue. They have laughed all the way through Question Time.
Members interjecting.
Mr STONE: I will now pick up the interjection, as I am entitled to do, about the matter of the syllabus. The member for Nhulunbuy, quietly when not too many people were around, thought he would get on the public record last night because the penny had finally dropped. Let me explain to him, and I hope he will have the good grace to make a personal explanation and apologise. The question that was asked on Wednesday 26 November 1997 included the following words in reference to my ‘case’ that he likes to tell everyone about. He said it is ‘used as an example ... of what not to do if one is a lawyer’. That is absolutely false.
Mr Stirling interjecting.
Mr STONE: Let me finish.
Mr Stirling interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! The member for Nhulunbuy.
Mr STONE: That is why he did it in the adjournment debate. He knew that he had been caught out. He has now tabled the same syllabus that I have. This is the current syllabus for 1997. It goes through the Legal Practitioners Act. The case of Stone v The Law Society of the Northern Territory is not about what you should or should not do as a practitioner. It is about processes to be followed. In fact, the orders of the court made it quite clear ...
Mr Stirling: Let’s go now. We would have it over by lunch. You are a joke.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Mr STONE: You misled parliament and you know it. You have been looking awkward all week. You snuck in here in the adjournment debate last night ...
Mr Stirling: You are a fraud and a hypocrite like your simpering little mate.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Member for Nhulunbuy, under standing order 240A, I direct you to leave the Chamber. You are over the top.
Mr STONE: The member for Nhulunbuy was caught out, Madam Speaker ...
Madam SPEAKER: Chief Minister, I urge you to complete your answer.
Mr STONE: I will, Madam Speaker.
He misled parliament. He held the case up as an example of what a practitioner should not do when, in fact, it is all about process. In the case of Stone v the Law Society, I won. It was quashed and an order for costs was made against the Law Society. That is where the member for Nhulunbuy ...
Ms Martin: It was your conduct. You are a scumbag lawyer.
Mr Bailey: Scumbag lawyer and scumbag QC.
Mr STONE: I am deeply wounded. Let me sit down.
Madam SPEAKER: The member for Fannie Bay will be the next one out if she keeps this up. Withdraw that remark.
Ms MARTIN: I withdraw the remark.
Madam SPEAKER: The member for Wanguri will withdraw his remark also. He repeated it.
Mr BAILEY: I withdraw both that he is a scumbag lawyer and a scumbag QC. I added that, and therefore I thought I had better withdraw that as well. I withdraw both of them.
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Mr STONE: Madam Speaker, it is a bit like being beaten with a wet feather. The member for Wanguri completely underlines the point I was trying to make. Even he is not taking this seriously. When the opposition asks me to sack my deputy and then rolls around laughing, the demand has no credibility.
Let me finish on this issue. The member for Nhulunbuy misled the parliament. The member for Nhulunbuy peddled the story to the media which gleefully printed it and got it wrong.
Ms Martin: Sue.
Mr STONE: Sue? I would rather that people had the good grace to face up to the fact that they got it wrong, and did something about it.
Mr Bailey: What about you, Shane?
Mr STONE: I am not sacking the Deputy Chief Minister.
Mr Bailey: Did you lie in parliament, Shane?
Page 61
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I am still trying to work out why the opposition has not sacked the Leader of the Opposition - ‘unfit to govern’, ‘not capable of leading’. This preoccupation with a matter that I consider to be a complete farce, when there are important issues to be tackled - and we have touched on a number in this Chamber this morning ...
Mr Bailey: You do not think a minister breaking the law and lying is an issue?
Mr STONE: I will come back to that. At least, I have had the nous to make inquiries of the New South Wales police, and I do not believe that the opposition has.
Issues that have been raised here this morning - for example, the current mosquito plague - are very important matters. The review of Aboriginal land rights is important. The question that was asked of me by the member for Nelson on freehold title ...
Ms Martin: Was a load of rubbish.
Mr STONE: The member for Fannie Bay says that it was a load of rubbish. Therein lies the reason why the Labor Party sits on that side of the Chamber. An article that appeared in the Bulletin of 9 September 1997 was worth reading. It was written by Graham Richardson, that great number-cruncher and icon of the Australian Labor Party. He had this to say:
The Labor Party in the Northern Territory has every right to feel desperate. I acted as the ALP campaign director for the first
elections in the Territory in 1974. Although Labor failed to win one seat, I did not regard the experience as a personal failure.
Labor, as a party, was hard to find. None of the candidates was suitable to act as leader ...
Mr TOYNE: A point of order, Madam Speaker! Standing order 67 says that answers must be relevant to the question. The Chief Minister’s response is not relevant to the question.
Mr STONE: Speaking to the point of order, Madam Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition started her question by chiding me for not treating the issue that she has currently been running as a serious one. I am simply highlighting that there are serious issues, and I am doing that in response to the Leader of the Opposition’s preamble to her question.
Mr BAILEY: Madam Speaker, speaking to the point of order, it is quite clear that the Chief Minister is doing no such thing. He is reading comments on an election that occurred more than 20 years ago. Quite clearly, he is not dealing with the issue of the seriousness of the allegations against his Deputy Chief Minister ...
Mr Stone: What allegations?
Mr BAILEY: That he has lied in this Chamber and that he went interstate and participated in a breach of New South Wales law. The Chief Minister has been asked what action he intends to take in relation to that. If he thinks that this is related to the question, that is rubbish.
Page 58
Madam SPEAKER: As all honourable members know, the basic rule for answers is that the nature of the reply lies at the discretion of the minister.
Mr Bailey: It has still to be relevant.
Mr Stone: And this is relevant.
Madam SPEAKER: It is still at the discretion of the minister.
Mr STONE: This is relevant, Madam Speaker. I will read on:
Labor as a party was hard to find. Not one of the candidates was suitable to act as leader. A non-candidate read the official policy
speech at the campaign launch.
Ms Martin: How long ago was this?
Mr STONE: This is 1974.
Mr Bailey: This is 1974! That is how relevant it is.
Mr STONE: To continue:
Several actual candidates were full-on alcoholics, and it has to be said that Labor then got the result it deserved. In 1997, it would seem
things have not improved all that much.
Mr Reed: There you go - it is relevant.
Mr STONE: There is the relevance, and that is what your own Labor colleagues think. The Leader of the Opposition got to her feet and asked why this was being treated with such hilarity?’ I will tell her - it is hilarious. I think it is a joke. I am not the least bit persuaded by anything that the Leader of the Opposition or the rabble that follow her have had to say on this issue. As I said last week, it was like being savaged by a dead sheep. That is how effective they are. There are important issues facing the Territory, yet this is their biggest issue. Who are these people? Are they the thought police or something? Where are they coming from?
Mr Bailey: Who are you trying to sue in the media, Shane?
Mr STONE: I will pick up that interjection. I will come back to it because I want to finish on that note.
Members interjecting.
Mr Bailey interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Member for Wanguri, cease your interjections.
Mr STONE: I do not tolerate lies, Madam Speaker ...
Mr Bailey: So why do you tolerate ...
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Mr Bailey: So why do you tell them - always?
Mr STONE: ... and I always fight them. A number of allegations have been made here. It has been asserted that the Deputy Chief Minister broke the law.
Mrs Hickey: No, he participated in an illegal act.
Mr STONE: Let us pick up that interjection. ‘No, he participated in an illegal act’. The inquiries of my office to the New South Wales police today leave it quite unclear as to whether there was any illegal act. I believe it is typical of the sloppiness of the Labor Party that members opposite would slavishly pick up a newspaper and say that, if it is in the press, it must be right. Of course, the first thing a sensible person would do would be to find these people in Sydney, to pick up the phone and ask them. We did, and surprise, surprise! They said they had no knowledge of the matter other than media reports that were being passed to them. If something wrong has been done, I am sure the New South Wales police are quite capable of walking up the street from their little police station in Kings Cross and making their own inquiries. Certainly, they do not need some fellow sitting in Darwin to give them information.
The opposition may think that this is a very serious matter. Its members thrive on this kind of muckraking and guttersniping. They have had a crack at me because I go out for a drink with my mate and have a good night out. I hear the comments back. I will tell them how grubby they are. They have even organised people to ring media outlets and make allegations. That is their style of politics. We know exactly what they get up to. Let me tell them that it simply rolls over the top of me. I do not really care.
Members interjecting.
Page 59
Mr ELFERINK: A point of order, Madam Speaker! Because the people of the Northern Territory gave us such a large mandate, we have to share this ...
Madam SPEAKER: Order! What is your point of order?
Mr ELFERINK: The interjections make it very difficult to hear the Chief Minister.
Madam SPEAKER: I agree, but that is not a point of order. I ask opposition members to allow the Chief Minister to complete his answer. I also ask the Chief Minister to stop being so provocative and get on with it.
Mr STONE: Madam Speaker, I am just a pussy cat. Even members opposite have been laughing along this morning. How can they, with any credibility, say they have this earth-shattering issue. They have laughed all the way through Question Time.
Members interjecting.
Mr STONE: I will now pick up the interjection, as I am entitled to do, about the matter of the syllabus. The member for Nhulunbuy, quietly when not too many people were around, thought he would get on the public record last night because the penny had finally dropped. Let me explain to him, and I hope he will have the good grace to make a personal explanation and apologise. The question that was asked on Wednesday 26 November 1997 included the following words in reference to my ‘case’ that he likes to tell everyone about. He said it is ‘used as an example ... of what not to do if one is a lawyer’. That is absolutely false.
Mr Stirling interjecting.
Mr STONE: Let me finish.
Mr Stirling interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! The member for Nhulunbuy.
Mr STONE: That is why he did it in the adjournment debate. He knew that he had been caught out. He has now tabled the same syllabus that I have. This is the current syllabus for 1997. It goes through the Legal Practitioners Act. The case of Stone v The Law Society of the Northern Territory is not about what you should or should not do as a practitioner. It is about processes to be followed. In fact, the orders of the court made it quite clear ...
Mr Stirling: Let’s go now. We would have it over by lunch. You are a joke.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Mr STONE: You misled parliament and you know it. You have been looking awkward all week. You snuck in here in the adjournment debate last night ...
Mr Stirling: You are a fraud and a hypocrite like your simpering little mate.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Member for Nhulunbuy, under standing order 240A, I direct you to leave the Chamber. You are over the top.
Mr STONE: The member for Nhulunbuy was caught out, Madam Speaker ...
Madam SPEAKER: Chief Minister, I urge you to complete your answer.
Mr STONE: I will, Madam Speaker.
He misled parliament. He held the case up as an example of what a practitioner should not do when, in fact, it is all about process. In the case of Stone v the Law Society, I won. It was quashed and an order for costs was made against the Law Society. That is where the member for Nhulunbuy ...
Ms Martin: It was your conduct. You are a scumbag lawyer.
Mr Bailey: Scumbag lawyer and scumbag QC.
Mr STONE: I am deeply wounded. Let me sit down.
Madam SPEAKER: The member for Fannie Bay will be the next one out if she keeps this up. Withdraw that remark.
Ms MARTIN: I withdraw the remark.
Madam SPEAKER: The member for Wanguri will withdraw his remark also. He repeated it.
Mr BAILEY: I withdraw both that he is a scumbag lawyer and a scumbag QC. I added that, and therefore I thought I had better withdraw that as well. I withdraw both of them.
Page 60
Mr STONE: Madam Speaker, it is a bit like being beaten with a wet feather. The member for Wanguri completely underlines the point I was trying to make. Even he is not taking this seriously. When the opposition asks me to sack my deputy and then rolls around laughing, the demand has no credibility.
Let me finish on this issue. The member for Nhulunbuy misled the parliament. The member for Nhulunbuy peddled the story to the media which gleefully printed it and got it wrong.
Ms Martin: Sue.
Mr STONE: Sue? I would rather that people had the good grace to face up to the fact that they got it wrong, and did something about it.
Mr Bailey: What about you, Shane?
Mr STONE: I am not sacking the Deputy Chief Minister.
Mr Bailey: Did you lie in parliament, Shane?
Page 61
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016