Page 5107 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 12 December 1990
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having to be drafted to correct a minor technical error. That is the inevitable consequence of belting legislation through in a hurry - the inevitable consequence of inadequate time to consider legislation before this house.
It has been pointed out, in defence of the Government, that it is not uncommon in other parliaments for a lot of legislation to be put through very quickly; but there is usually a very simple reason for that, and that very simple reason is the presence of an upper house or house of review. Often an upper house will modify certain aspects of a government's legislative program so that the popular house is confronted with a large raft of legislation that has been amended in some way by the house of review and that requires urgent attention. That, almost inevitably, is the problem that gives rise to those marathon sittings of the House of Representatives and the examples that Mr Collaery cited of five or six or 10 Bills being put through in one day. That is usually a situation that has arisen because of amendments to earlier legislation by the upper house.
That is not an issue here; nor, I would suggest, is it a problem with the overall legislative program. The Opposition has on a number of occasions in the earlier part of this year drawn attention to the relative paucity of legislation before this Assembly, the relative lack of important business before this house and the rather remarkable practice that is developing in this Alliance Government of issuing a ministerial statement followed by a speech from all members of the Alliance Government on that ministerial statement - really a case of filibustering and time wasting rather than getting on to dealing with legislation. We had day after day of that in the middle part of this year and then, in the last couple of weeks of the year, we find ourselves confronted with a very long legislative program which necessitates late night sittings and the consequent rushing through of legislation.
Again, to hark back to the events of last evening, a lot of the concerns that Mr Moore was raising in relation to that Bill could well have been allayed had that Bill lain on the table for a day or so after Mr Moore's criticisms and comments had been raised, and we or he would have had the opportunity to speak with Government members. Instead, we had a process of simply belting the legislation through. Towards the very end of the debate last night Mr Moore proposed an amendment for there to be a sunset clause in the legislation. Mr Moore used his opportunity to make some remarks on that and I thought it was a quite compelling argument. He made the case, and what was the response from the Government? Did we have a Government member get up and respond to Mr Moore's argument and explain why the Government felt that was inappropriate? No, not a bit of it - no speaker; just vote the matter down. That is not the way to raise respect for the legislative process in this Territory. If members, whether they be members of the official Opposition or members of
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