Page 1102 - Week 06 - Thursday, 27 July 1989
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Minister is suggesting is, in my view, an unreasonable imposition on the secretarial resources of this Assembly.
I understand that in your discussions - and this is hearsay - with the Chief Minister about the budget for the Assembly, one of the things that has been suggested that should be constrained is the provision of secretarial staff for the committees. Now, you cannot have it both ways. You are either going to staff the committees to carry out this kind of work or you are not. And even if you are, with all of the other references that these committees already have on their plate and which are going to multiply anyway, it is simply a task beyond the capability, in my view, of a single committee clerk to undertake.
And I submit, Mr Speaker, as I have said before in connection with a previous reference by a Minister to a committee of this house, it really is the responsibility of the Government to undertake these inquiries and then submit the results of those investigations and inquiries for review.
I notice that the very first word in the Chief Minister's original reference was that the committee should "review" some aspects of this project - "review the potential development options". Well, "review" means that you have got something there already that you are going to look at, not that you are going to go out and identify them first. So I think that the terms of reference themselves almost imply that somebody else was going to be doing some work that would then be put to this committee for review. Whether that was the intention or not, I firmly believe that that is the proper course to adopt.
Now, the result of Mr Jensen's amendment is that the Government will be required to have a look at it, to look at what the Government's policy is in terms of identifying further areas for development; identify what kinds of things the Government would like to see in such a development; identify the place in the Government's construction program if any of it is going to be undertaken by government or, if not, then set up the management arrangements, if this is going to be a private enterprise development, that the Government would want to see to oversight a project of this order of magnitude.
Once the Government has done those things, then it is appropriate for the standing committee to have a look at what the Government has come up with and see whether this Assembly could support what the Government is proposing. I think that is the right way to go, and so I support Mr Jensen's amendment that will allow the business of government to be done by Government and the business of this Assembly to be done by this Assembly.
MR COLLAERY (4.25): Just shortly, and not seeking to commit myself to a view either way, as chairman of the committee to which this is being referred, I do say that I
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