Page 2846 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 15 August 1990
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MR SPEAKER: I did not hear the full context of the point made by Mr Collaery. It has been raised. Mr Collaery, please withdraw that comment.
Mr Collaery: Mr Speaker, I unconditionally withdraw that comment.
MR SPEAKER: Thank you. Mr Humphries, please proceed.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, it is perfectly obvious that the argument with respect to this debate is a legal one. The basic problem is not standing order 200 and how it might read; it is section 65 of the self-government Act. I want to remind the house, in case anybody has forgotten, that that Act was not passed by members of this chamber; it was passed through the Federal Parliament under the auspices of a Labor Government, and it put in place certain restrictions and controls on the granting of self-government to the ACT.
It is worth referring to, and explaining, those circumstances. It was obviously the view of those who passed the self-government Act that, at that time, the ACT should not have been trusted with all the attributes of democracy that are enjoyed in other States and territories.
For example, the ACT was not to have immediate control over things like police, the courts and corporate law because it was felt that it ought to acquire the full attributes and qualities of self-government progressively over a period. It was also obviously felt by the Federal Parliament that the restrictions that apply to oppositions in other States, with respect to the moving and passage of money Bills, appropriation Bills, ought to be strengthened in the case of the ACT Assembly, at least in the short term. We cannot say whether the Federal Government intended to change that position at some future point. Certainly the provisions that affect the ACT Legislative Assembly, as indicated in section 65, are very different from the requirements that bind oppositions in other States and territories. The ACT has a very severe limitation placed on it with respect to section 65.
The evidence of that fact is that the wording used in that section is quite different from that used in the Federal Constitution and other documents setting up those restrictions in other jurisdictions - the constitutions of other States and so on. The wording is quite expressly different, and it is obvious to everybody who looks at it very carefully that it is different.
Mr Connolly has put forward the most extraordinary argument that I have ever heard any lawyer put forward; that if we were to change standing orders 200 and 201, which are subordinate to section 65, somehow section 65, the superior piece of legislation, would be read down in accordance with our amendment to standing order 200. What an extraordinary argument!
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