Page 2902 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 15 August 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
3. consideration of the full effects of, and alternatives to, the proposed legislation;
4. balanced reporting by the media;
5. time for research, consideration and debate by MLAs;
6. time for assessment of the proposed legislation by the Scrutiny of Bills and Subordinate Legislation Committee;
7. time for the research, drafting and discussion of amendments;
particularly considering the fact that there is no Upper House review in the ACT.
MR STEVENSON (3.40): Mr Speaker, Canberrans are vitally concerned about consultation on matters that concern them, or lack of it. (Quorum formed)
I think this matter was brought home very clearly on the fluoride issue. If you ask people in Canberra what they feel about the fluoride matter, whether or not they agree with fluoridation they will say that the matter was rushed through - the vast majority of people will say that. When they say "rushed through", they mean that the time from when the Bill was proposed until its final passage was too quick to allow for fair and open public consultation. That is their consideration. However, the truth was vastly different to public consideration as, far from being rushed through this Assembly, of the 15 Bills that had in the life of the Assembly up to that time been introduced or passed, it took the longest of them all in passage. It was the only Bill that took longer than a month; it took five weeks - although there were Bills passed in one and two days and a number of others in less than seven days.
So, notwithstanding the fact that the fluoride Bill was the longest of all the Bills in its passage, nevertheless we need to look at public perception here. That public perception was brought about basically by very unfair and misleading reporting in certain sections of the media. People want the time for full and open consultation. Nothing could be more obvious than in the current debate on schools issues.
There have been any number of Bills passed through this Assembly very rapidly indeed. What the public are concerned about is the concept of democracy. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines it as:
Government by the people, or that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people and is exercised either directly by them or by officers elected by them ...
Indeed, we do not have a democracy. We should have a representative democracy, although that could well be debated. The whole idea is that people want full and open consultation. Bills being passed through this house in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven days, does not allow for that.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .