Page 880 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 March 1990
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submissions put to the committee should recommend one thing, yet the committee members took it upon themselves to do something else. That is not a fatal flaw, but it is a very strange way of going about their business.
Conversely, on the Social Policy Committee where the Opposition's proposal, and indeed your own proposal, Mr Speaker, recommended that that committee be split into a social policy committee and an education and community affairs committee, the Administration and Procedures Committee has taken a different view and has recommended that there be only one committee. Once again, it appears to have flown in the face of the majority of submissions that it received and I cannot discern any very good reason for its having done that. As I said, it certainly will not affect our participation in the committees, but it does make you wonder sometimes how much notice is taken of submissions that we go to a great deal of trouble to prepare.
We are concerned also that a majority of members of the Standing Committee on Administration and Procedures did not support our proposals concerning the opening up of committees, both to the public and to the participation of all members of the Assembly. I do think it is very important that as a general rule the work of committees is open to scrutiny. We put a proposal that that be the case and if there was an occasion when a committee wished to hear a matter or discuss a matter in private then it was up to it to make that decision, but that as a general rule committee work would be open to the public. I stand by that and I think it is a matter that the Administration and Procedures Committee may wish to look at again. I think that it does give the unfortunate impression, an impression that has been borne out all too often in my view, that the Government is operating behind closed doors and is unwilling to open itself up to that kind of consultation and participation right across the committee system.
There is also the point that Assembly members should be free to attend any committee meeting and I do not think the Administration and Procedures Committee has said a great deal about that but I do think it is another important point. We are all members of the Legislative Assembly; we all have rights as members and I would consider the attendance by any member of the Assembly at committee meetings as being something that the Administration and Procedures Committee could well have endorsed in its report.
Mr Speaker, we do support the proposal that the membership of at least one committee is to be expanded and I understand that that expansion is to enable Mr Moore to participate in that committee. I reiterate the position that we have constantly put and that we have put in our submission as well, that we should adopt an inclusive approach to committee work, rather than seek to exclude particular members or groups. We should, in fact, seek to include as many people as possible.
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