Page 44 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 13 February 1990
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MR WOOD: No, quite the contrary. When the Follett Government sat on that side of the house it listened to its backbench, I can tell you, but the position was different. The Follett Government was a minority government and it had to argue everything through the house. It is true it lacked a large backbench. Nevertheless, the difference in that was made up because it had to come down to this Assembly and argue everything through. So the parliament was dominant. That is the key ingredient for our parliamentary democracy; it is the parliament that is ultimately dominant. True it is, that the executive, the government, is powerful, we accept that, but ultimately the parliament dominates.
Now, given the way that you have structured things, I am very pessimistic that the parliament is going to be able to be at all dominant. You have locked the parliament in by the way you have structured this Government. There should be a place for the backbench, but not in your style of Government. You have got a half collegiate system and a half, or a third, Westminster system - and I believe it is not going to work at all.
Nor - and I challenge Mr Humphries - will the position of Executive Deputies work. He spoke about the parliamentary secretaries in the United Kingdom, where certainly they have a role. It is an educative role for them, a position in which they are trained. In the Australian context, there have been many examples - a half dozen examples, I think, from memory when I read this last year - where governments have tried to have assistant ministers or ministers without portfolios, or honorary ministers, and they have never survived. In the UK experience they have continued. In the Australian experience they have not survived because they have never been successful.
Mr Kaine: This time they will, Bill.
Mr Humphries: We are going to make them successful this time.
MR WOOD: Well, are you? The ultimate test for any executive position is that you need a department to administer if you are to have a productive role. The Executive Deputies, we understand, do not, although they are sharing power. I am not quite sure yet how it is that they are sharing the power. You might tell me, as you reply, Mr Duby, or somebody else, how it is that the power is being shared with those people who sit behind you, because I cannot see it.
The problem is that you have got this mixture of systems and they are not going to work. Let me repeat some of the remarks I made last year when I was talking about the role of Executive Deputies and committees. There is the potential again that the Executive Deputy with the direct link to Government, with the Government majority, will see
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