Page 1690 - Week 06 - Thursday, 3 June 2021
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If members were to look at the Latimer House principles, though, there is a solution to this. It is probably not one that you would go to! You are all government backbenchers. The Liberal Party are happy to step up and have two members on each committee, and aid government backbenchers. It does not bother us which version of socialist we get on our committee. We could have a red socialist or we could have a Green socialist on the committee. Based on the Latimer House principles, we would make sure that we are actually doing the job of scrutinising government.
The Greens used to love the Latimer House principles before they had 50 per cent of their members being ministers. They used to love scrutiny; they used to love this stuff—Ms Le Couteur used to, anyway. Now that half of them are in government and the others are government backbenchers, they are not so keen on it.
I do not think that is likely to happen. It is a gesture made in good faith, in that we are happy to take those two members on, and you could just have one green or one red socialist on the committee. If you do not want to do that, because you do not want to scrutinise the government, it is disappointing, but I anticipate that that would be your view.
Ms Berry: Just stick with the red socialists.
MR HANSON: Just stick with the red socialists, not the green socialists; fair enough. As I said, we do not mind, Ms Berry; we are happy with either colour socialist.
The opposition, at the end of the day, is here to scrutinise government. The problem is that the Labor Party and the Greens, forming the government, have the opposite view. We get that. We will always look for the most effective way to scrutinise the government. Our view is that that is best done through a select committee on estimates because it can look at the budget in its entirety, as a whole. It also ensures that the standing committees are not stuck with doing that work which could be done by a select committee, and they can get on with other, more substantive issues.
That is our view, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is important that we get this dealt with today. If we get it done today, we can get that important work done. I commend the motion to the Assembly. I think we have seen enough to enable us to make this decision today. We do not need to refer it for further consideration, which really means the Labor Party and the Greens getting together behind closed doors and working out what it is that they actually want to stitch up.
MS ORR (Yerrabi) (11.24): The Labor Party and I will not be supporting this motion today, because Mr Hanson knows full well, as a member of the Administration and Procedure Committee, that the admin and procedure committee was going to do a review, and will be doing a review, of how the committees are working, given the new process that we have undertaken this term.
There is a view that we need to give it a bit more thought, because we have had a process at the beginning of the term that was a little different to how it will play out for the rest of the term, given that annual reports and estimates were combined
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