Page 42 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 13 February 1990
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but, essentially, they are involved in the work of the department of that Minister; they work with that Minister in that department and they give the Minister advice and seek his advice on matters touching on that department. They cannot take executive decisions but they do, for example, sign letters. In my book that looks very, very similar to the model that the ACT has adopted, and that very model comes from the Westminster Parliament which Ms Follett holds up as the model which we should work to on this occasion. I think she ought to take some note of the parliamentary tradition and do some research.
Ms Follett claims that the public of the ACT are confused. I think they are a little bit confused, I feel a little bit confused, but you, Ms Follett, and your colleagues are responsible, in part, for this confusion. You have done your best to obscure the distinction between Executive Deputies and Ministers. I quote, for example, from a statement put out to the media by Mr Wood, as education spokesman for the ALP. It claimed that because I, as Minister, had Dr Kinloch as my Executive Deputy, I would not need to have a schools council. What absolute and utter twaddle! There is no reason that Dr Kinloch's existence as my Executive Deputy should make any difference whatsoever to that particular issue, and I think the sooner the confusion being generated by members of the ALP opposite is stopped the sooner the confusion generally will die down and people will understand what this new model is about.
I have spoken to members of the community about this particular model. One member of the community said to me the other day that he thought it was a brilliant idea. It was an excellent way of integrating the involvement and the talent of all people in this Assembly who care to take part in it. I think that is a pretty high accolade.
The fact is that people opposite in this chamber do not like this model of Executive Deputies because they are not used to sharing power. They are used to a model where they have power for themselves and they are not answerable to anybody. That was the way they ran the Assembly when they were in government and it is not the way the Assembly is being run now. This Assembly was elected by the people of the ACT nearly a year ago. It consists not of one or two major parties, but of five or six parties and groups. It is an Assembly which was clearly designed by the people of the ACT to share power across a range of groups or parties. That was clearly the intention of the electorate when they put so many parties in place and did not provide for any one party to have a majority. That is what this Government is now being able to achieve. This Government is providing for a model which allows a number of parties to participate in the work of government, and I think the sooner the ALP acknowledges that this is an appropriate model in the circumstances, the sooner we can get on with the business of providing good government.
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