Page 3154 - Week 15 - Thursday, 14 December 1989
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MR WOOD: Will you also clear up article 10?
MR SPEAKER: Order!
Mr Collaery: You are attacking the integrity of members.
MR WOOD: No. I hope I am not doing that. I have had some anxieties. You are telling me they are groundless, and I am pleased to hear that. Certainly, what I heard on television and what I read in the paper did lead me to believe that that may be the case. I had previously discounted article 10 of your accord, as reported in the media.
Mr Jensen: You do not believe everything you read in the paper, do you, Bill?
MR WOOD: I had previously discounted that article, which states, and I will read the full part of it because I would not want to take any part out of context:
Decision-making will be vested in the Joint Party Room. Major policy initiatives may be prepared by individual ministers or ministerial committees. The ministers or committee chairmen will prepare submissions for consideration by the Executive and subsequent Joint Party Room discussion. Implementation will be the responsibility of the Executive.
Now, I had earlier discounted that and said that those committees had nothing to do with the Assembly's committees. I believe I am right.
Mr Kaine: You are absolutely right.
MR WOOD: Thank you. I have that answer, so that allays a fear that I had. I still have a question on notice to Mr Collaery or to Mr Kaine. I expect the support of members on the other side of the house to maintain the committee structure as it was, to give due recognition to opposition parties and to consult with them, not simply on who is going to be on the committee but on the way the committees are to operate. If that happens and if we get assurances about that, whether today or further down the track as the question of executive deputies is further clarified, the committee system may still survive as it is at the moment.
I want to make some comment about the new diagrammatic sheet of administrative responsibilities. I welcome that because it is a very significant change from the one that was passed around a week or so ago. It is a more appropriate one, might I say, and I welcome the Government's changed view on this.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (11.50): Mr Speaker, I want to make a few comments on the committee arrangements. It could be that some of the criticisms that have come from members of the Opposition, former members of the Government, are predicated on their inexperience of this Assembly's committees. They operate,
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