Page 476 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
That is an issue that I think we need, if we are committed to alternative dispute resolution, to explore jointly before we set up another disputation resolution tribunal in this Territory. I stress that our proposal in our exposure Bill was to suggest the use of the Small Claims Court; and we note comment about that, and the potential delays that are being alleged to occur there. No doubt, we will seek the comment of the Chief Magistrate.
Mr Speaker, to summarise, the Labor New South Wales Bill introduces an inefficient 1977 structure. It proposes an alternative investment body to compete with our own Treasury. This is a city-state. We do not need this level of bureaucracy. We certainly do not need that board, and we would have to pay those people - they would be a cost to us - and it is not clear what the advantages would be; they have not been argued very clearly.
Mr Speaker, this Government has a very large legislative drafting program, and the fact that Cabinet agreed to this legislation on 3 September and I did not, as Minister responsible, produce a draft exposure Bill until 24 January is, as the Opposition well knows, normal in the context of the very great challenges facing our government legal drafting service, post-self-government. I wish to stress that the working draft issued by my office on 24 January 1991 has not gone to the Alliance Cabinet yet. It is not a Cabinet approved document; it is a working draft, sent out for community consultation so that we can take on board all of the comments, including any of those made opposite, and then both Bills can, in fact, be dealt with together. I saw Mr Moore smiling; there is no inference in that. (Extension of time granted)
Mr Moore: Mr Speaker, I apologise to the house for smiling.
MR COLLAERY: I thank Mr Moore for his generous gesture.
Mr Speaker, the concluding remarks I wanted to make were that this town has a tradition of consultation; the community grants and the community advisory structure are well embedded in our national psyche in this city, and it is appropriate that the Government should continue this consultation period for a few more weeks before drafting a final Bill for the Cabinet to decide on.
The first step you need to know as an opposition - through you, Mr Speaker - is that this Government is committed to this form of legislation. The machinery - how it works - is the matter before the public. We are not going to be dissuaded from establishing an independent stakeholding of these funds. We are not going to be dissuaded from ensuring that the interest earned on this fund goes back, in one form or another, to those who hold it. There may be an interim period when we recover the seed funding, which we estimate will be a quarter of a million dollars. There
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .