Page 1969 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 24 October 1989
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MR HUMPHRIES: I move:
That the Assembly -
(1) believes that a forward legislative program is essential to the effective scrutiny of government legislation and the good government of the ACT;
(2) calls on the Government to provide Assembly members with a forward legislative program at the beginning of each sitting session and that this program be regularly updated;
(3) notes that on 6 July 1989 the Chief Minister made an undertaking in the Assembly to provide a forward legislative program and to update this program on a regular basis; and
(4) condemns the Government for its failure to provide such a program.
I want to speak only very briefly in support of this motion, since the debate that has just ensued on the MPI clearly covers all the issues entailed in this motion. The Opposition is less than convinced by the Government's pleadings on this question. Its protestations ring very hollow amongst 17 people who have experienced, and who have had the misfortune of being the victims of, the Government's haphazard and inaccurate process of identifying changes needing to be made to Bills, bringing them in and identifying the whole range of problems associated with those Bills.
Mr Speaker, I want to comment only on one thing that was raised by the Chief Minister, and also by the Deputy Chief Minister - the question of the Government's preparedness to put legislation back in the event it found that it did not have support for legislation in this place. That simply is not true.
I have no doubt at all that, later tonight, should we reach the Payroll Tax (Amendment) Bill, we will find the Government bleating that it should be considered straight away, saying that delay is unacceptable. The Bill was brought in on 28 September. Less than a month has elapsed since that time, as I have explained, with the Assembly digesting 10 Bills in three weeks, some of them quite complex, and with a whole range of other matters interposing themselves such as the Estimates Committee. This makes it impossible for the Opposition to properly put itself in the position of being able to say immediately whether or not it can accept or reject certain Bills. This particular Bill is a good example of that.
The Government's approach on that one, I can assure members, will not be to gracefully accept a delay. It wants it done quickly, as it did indeed with the Gaming Machine (Amendment) Bill. It will not accept or tolerate delay. So for the Government to say in this place that it will cheerfully accept delay if members ask for it is simply not true.
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