Page 2910 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 15 August 1990
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as members on this side of the house were concerned, that the matter be debated today. Somewhere along the line there should be a balance between the amount of time that Bills sit on the table here and the need for urgency. I know that a provision for urgency is made in the standing orders. It is quite appropriate therefore that people who wish something to be dealt with as urgent, or to be dealt with in an urgent way, should debate whether or not it is urgent.
What we have, of course, and Mr Stevenson drew attention to this, is the lack of an upper house. This should make us look very carefully at the practice in this house as distinguished from the practice in the House of Representatives, because on this particular matter we are quite different from the House of Representatives. We have no reviewing body; we do not have the second and third readings and so forth of the Bill which protect that body from making mistakes as this Assembly did with reference to the fluoride Bill. We should have had more time for consideration and more time for community comment. Had that been the case - - -
Mr Stevenson: It took five weeks though.
MR MOORE: It was certainly a matter - - -
Mr Stevenson: It was the longest of the lot.
MR MOORE: That was the one which did sit longest, I must agree. Anyway, the point is that there is some need for a standardised time for Bills to sit on the table unless one is declared as something that needs to be dealt with urgently. There will be lots of times where things should be dealt with urgently and expeditiously and people will use this method which has not, as my memory serves me, been used in this house at all. It seems to me that it could well be used and the sorts of Bills that Mr Collaery referred to, that can be dealt with very quickly, could be dealt with in that particular manner - provided members have had the chance to look at them.
We do not have to take the term "urgent" to mean that it is so urgent that we have to do it this very minute. We could take a slightly broader term and say that we consider it urgent enough to be able to debate it next week. Such matters could be dealt with in an appropriate way in terms of the parliament and I think that that would allow members enough time to prepare their arguments and their debate. One of the problems that are associated with being on either the crossbenches or the Opposition is the limited amount of support one has for preparation of such things compared to the amount of support in preparation proffered to members of the Government.
The time factor is of great assistance here. If we are really concerned about genuine community consultation, if we are concerned about the community knowing what we are
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