Page 1062 - Week 06 - Thursday, 27 July 1989
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request for a meeting, signed by such number of members as is fixed by enactment, delivered to you, Mr Speaker.
The fact is we do not have an enactment yet. There is no way of recalling this Assembly if we have an emergency on our hands or if we have a very deep concern about an action of the minority Government taken out of sitting times. I assume, Mr Speaker, that that lack is not in the Bill that is to be presented today to deal with some aspects of the Assembly's processes.
The fact is that we should have, at an early date, I submit with respect to all of my colleagues, looked at that provision and realised that it was in the interests of the opposition parties to have the power to recall this Assembly. We have not done that. I suppose, tactically, you cannot blame the Government for not wanting to deliver its head up to us in a situation where we took great exception to an act or actions of the minority Government.
Mr Speaker, the Rally would like to go on record on this issue to state that we accept all of the comments made generally by Assembly members regarding the workload of the committee system but, nevertheless, the Assembly must be open at least once every few weeks, and particularly in these testing times when there are divisive issues in the community. The Rally above all respects numbers, and Mr Jensen has reached some concord on the issue. The Rally is not entirely satisfied and indeed my colleague Mr Moore and I are unhappy that we are again to truncate a school holiday and submit the Assembly staff, the many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of public servants, to have to remain on station because this Assembly is sitting.
The Assembly is sitting on 26, 27 and 28 September, on the Deputy Chief Minister's proposition. That is not really a satisfactory situation for those reasons. Nevertheless, the overriding concern is that the Territory be adequately and properly represented. The Rally concedes that point even though there is further strong individual sacrifice required of the Assembly members and all who support and service the Assembly.
Mr Speaker, the chart given to us of the number of days the legislative councils, assemblies and parliamentary bodies elsewhere in the country sit misses one very important thing. It is the regularity with which this Assembly sits that is most important, because at seven days' notice we could bring on a motion of no confidence and remove this Government were it to be so decided by those who would wish to move the motion. That is the guarantee we have. To have a full slab of no sitting periods during the Federal budget process is, of course, to not sit when matters of extreme concern are relevant. We are not sure of the date - at least I am not - when the Chief Minister proposes to bring down her September budget. That is not clear. Once again, were that budget to be totally unacceptable, that could be a ground for those proceedings I mentioned.
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