Page 1567 - Week 05 - Thursday, 18 April 1991
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members of his committee's secretariat. Ours too worked long hours under considerable pressure to ensure that the committees were able to meet the very tight timetable which was set for us.
All committee members are fully aware of the efforts put in by the committee staff in keeping our committee system functioning. The problem, of course, is compounded by the small numbers of members available for committee service and a very limited number of committee staff compared to our colleagues on the hill. At this stage I would like to make a plea for some reconsideration of that aspect of the staffing of our Assembly, because I think committees are a very important part of it. It would be appropriate for us to look at that matter, now that we have been going for in excess of two years. I would encourage all members of the Assembly to bear this in mind when allocating tasks to our committees and during their participation on committees. Of course, I would be remiss if I did not thank members who participated in the deliberations of the committees and, of course, those groups, organisations and individuals who submitted papers to the committees and appeared before us in the public hearings that we had.
This report addresses issues related to a package of legislation which is rightly acknowledged as having a major effect on the future of our city and has been on the community's agenda for some years. In fact, the concepts and thoughts within the legislation have been debated at length over a number of years - well before the Assembly was put in place. Because of the limited time we had in which to report - that is, from 21 February, the date of the motion which established the joint reference, to today - the committees took the view that we would concentrate on the issues raised in the second round of public consultations that were still of concern to the community, rather than the more detailed legal and technical aspects of the legislation. We thought it was more appropriate to consider the major issues rather than nitpick, if you like, in relation to the legalities of this or that.
Before I go further, I would like to make one comment on something that Mr Moore referred to in his comments in relation to the participation of one of the organisations. That was one thing that particularly caught my mind. Mr Moore, of course, is no doubt aware of the situation - in fact, I am sure he is, because he received, as a member of the Conservation, Heritage and Environment Committee, copies of all submissions in both rounds of the community consultation process. The organisation that Mr Moore referred to - that is, the Royal Australian Planning Institute, ACT Chapter - in fact made a submission to that first round of public consultations. That organisation, having been given copies of the report of that round of consultations plus the second set of Bills, obviously decided that it did not need to make any further comment.
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