Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to talk about the details of what happened over the last year and who is responsible for what. I do not want to debate the Auditor General's report. I think most people have as much information as they are willing to take in and have come to their conclusions based on that information.

As I sit here listening, the question to me is following through with your motion to ask for the Premier's resignation. What does that do to government?

Like you, I put in three years here, not because I like to fight and argue and make accusations and so on, but because I want to do something. I want to do something for people that we represent. I will tell you that I have done the best I can and I will continue to do the best I can. I am not perfect, as many of you have told me, many many times, I am not perfect by any stretch, but I will tell you, I do everything I can for those people that we represent.

As we sit here today, it is pretty comfortable in here. There are people out there who probably slept last night on a floor or a chesterfield and there are babies that are taken away from their mothers. We become fairly distant from those things and we spend a lot of our time, and some would say waste a lot of our time in here, poking at each other, making accusations. That is not getting us anywhere near to what we said we were going to do when we all campaigned last time and made promises and so on.

People need housing. There are people sleeping in tents. Community infrastructure is falling apart. People need training. They cannot qualify for the jobs that are out there. There are aboriginal leaders who have said, "I don't think this government represents us." Sometimes I have to say that what we do in here probably adds more doubt to that.

There are a lot of important issues in front of us over the next year that we should be focused on. The pipeline is moving ahead. We have diamond mines moving ahead. On the economic side there is a lot of opportunity but we are not spending our time on that.

Devolution and resource revenue sharing has to happen if we are ever going to develop an economy and a political system in the North that recognizes the unique interests of our people. We are spending far too much time on this kind of thing. It is important to be accountable, absolutely. I have no doubt in my mind at all. It is important not to waste money. It is important to make the right decisions and to make them as efficiently and as effectively as possible. That is all of our jobs.

This last year has been hard. We should not have had to spend all this time we have in the last year bickering with each other, the conflict process, with payouts to people, all of that stuff did not have to happen, but it happened because we made it happen.

So where do we go from here? I think we have to look at what our options are. If you really feel that the one option is to have the Premier's head on a platter, and that is going to solve all the problems and we can have a good healthy government for the last year then I suppose we have to go there. I am not sure it is that easy. The immediate thing that goes through my mind is, okay, we do that then who is next?

-- Laughter

We heard a lot said last week. A couple of people were asking for my resignation and I do not take that as a laughing matter, I have to say, I do not. I do not joke about anybody's resignation.

This week we have heard a lot of accusations toward Mr. Steen. I do not take that lightly either. I think we are trying to run a good government but I really do have to ask, who is next then? Do we really have a better government if we do not have Mr. Kakfwi as Premier? Does that somehow straighten out these perceptions of misspending or whatever it is? I am not sure. That is one possibility.

The other one is, well maybe we should have a leadership review of the whole Cabinet, but I immediately dismiss that in my mind because it is too late for that. We should have had that last year. Maybe that is something in the next government we have to do, or whoever is there has to do, because we cannot have this going on all the time, hanging over our heads, while we are trying to do our jobs.

So, it is too late. We cannot back up a year and say let's give ourselves two more years to straighten this out. We only have a year left and I really believe it is too late for a leadership review.

I have to go to the next option in my mind and say, okay, I am not convinced that taking out the Premier is really going to resolve the problems we face. Have we gotten to the point where we are so dysfunctional that maybe we should just dissolve this government and call an election? Is that where we are at? If that is where we are at and you really feel we cannot carry out the mandate that the people gave us, that we have reached this point, then maybe that is the best thing we have to do.

I am certainly not going to make a motion to do that today, but I tell you, that has certainly crossed my mind a lot and I think we should all think seriously about what it is we are doing here.

I will tell you I do not believe that taking out the Premier is going to somehow straighten out all the wrongs in the past and have us have a good, effective government over the year that is left in our mandate.

I really think that if you believe it has gotten this bad then let's make a fresh start. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.