Page 80 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 12 February 1991
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agreement - Cabinet approval usually - and this can be done quite quickly, as the Federal Government has shown, and as other governments have shown around this country.
So there is not an ounce of credibility in the Leader of the Opposition's comment. It is devoid of legal accuracy. It is folkloric in the extreme. But it was vitriolic, and certainly I regret that the Leader of the Opposition has decided that the uncomfortable position which she is now in, both with her own party and in this Assembly, has to spur her into these types of personal attacks on members opposite her.
The Leader of the Opposition also used regrettable sexist language throughout her speech, suggesting that the Leader of the Opposition would give jobs only to boys. The term "boys" itself is now usually not acceptable in more informed circles, as the Leader of the Opposition should know, and likewise the term "girls" in that context. I believe that the Leader of the Opposition has shown herself up again for the shallowness of her perceptions, her sensitivity and her contribution to this Assembly.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (9.21): Given what Ms Follett said when she began this debate, I had thought that this would not be a matter of great contention between the different sides of the chamber; but somehow she seems unable to make a contribution which does not politicise us in some way. I want to emphasise that I welcome the report of this select committee and to indicate in particular that I believe that it makes a valuable contribution towards clearing the air following the advent of self-government in the ACT. Merely to look at the result of the election gives one a very clear impression of the misgivings members of the ACT community had about self-government; and, as a result, it was highly appropriate for the first Assembly of the ACT to sit down and thrash out some of the difficult issues that remained on the political agenda and to seek solutions to those particular concerns of people in the ACT.
I think that the report has shown also very clearly that there are many anomalies in the legislation that enacted self-government in the ACT, and that it is appropriate, with the evolution of a self-governing Territory, that changes occur in the structure of that democracy and that as a result the ACT achieve more of the independence and autonomy appropriate to its status. Appropriate accretions to the Territory's power and autonomy are recommended in a number of places in this report by the select committee. Recommendation 2, for example, proposes removing the Federal Government's power to set the number of members of the Assembly, recommendation 3 deals with the number of Ministers in the Assembly and recommendation 5 deals with the Governor-General's power to disallow enactments of this Assembly. All those recommendations are welcome in that they do give the ACT parliament similar recognition to that which has been achieved by State parliaments in Australia.
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