Page 1964 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 24 October 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
so urgent that it has to be in place today and it has to be debated and concluded.
Well, Mr Speaker, we are not in a position to debate it to finality. I warn the Government now that there are too many complexities, too many ramifications of that Bill, to allow it to go through this house not properly debated. So much for the Government's open and consultative process. That is a nonsense.
DR KINLOCH (4.18): Mr Speaker, I especially endorse remarks made by previous speakers about the Occupational Health and Safety Bill. But first of all, a positive point: we are all in a learning situation. We have been saying that many times. I would thank the Government for a briefing yesterday on the question of workmen's compensation. That was a good briefing, and there is at least one person here who helped us with that. But, even so, I felt I needed far more. I needed much more paperwork, much more advance notice, much more material.
I suspect their intentions were good, but that is not enough. It is not enough to have good intentions. I would like to see that kind of briefing greatly extended. Then, of course, we need to have briefings that go beyond what are given to us by the public servants concerned. They do a good job up to a point, but only up to a point.
Later today, we may reach the Payroll Tax (Amendment) Bill. But I feel totally inadequately prepared to deal with this Bill, as I discovered in a briefing we, ourselves, created earlier today. I would not want to vote on that Bill without having had some kind of critical briefing. I believe we are owed that critical briefing; we have not received it.
On another point - I do not want to go on for long - already many of us are making entries in our diaries for next year. For example, I am trying to decide about attending a conference next May, and I am sure many of us have got these problems right now. What do we do next April, May, June? People are already asking for speaking engagements, conference dates and so forth. I appreciate the dilemmas that we all have in our learning experiences.
I would put it to the Government that we are very worried about not knowing what is coming up. We do not yet know what the sitting weeks are next year. Is it not time that we have much more advance notice of what lies ahead of us? If we could work together on that, I would very much like to see it done.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister) (4.20): Today's motion regarding the provision of the Government's legislation program to the Assembly is deficient in many respects. It displays an alarming ignorance of the nature of the legislation program and of the practices in other parliaments, including the Commonwealth Parliament. The
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .