Page 1580 - Week 05 - Thursday, 18 April 1991
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The reality is that, in using its numbers to push these committees in the way that it did, this Government - in its approach to the timing of these committees and the fact that it decided willy-nilly that it was going to have legislation by 1 July - set an impossible task. It was a task in which the committees, right from the beginning, were never going to have any chance of reaching or meeting any reasonable objectives.
The reason for this, Mr Speaker, is that the planning legislation is such a complicated piece of legislation that it would require a significant amount of time and a significant amount of discussion to sort out the problems. What we have instead is an approach of picking out a couple of major areas within the legislation and attempting to deal with those. At least the committees did attempt to do that. The time factor was the critical one, and I feel that we all felt that pressure. I did not participate in the committees, as I had indicated that I would not do so as long as there was a conflict with Mr Jensen chairing the committees and also retaining his position as Executive Deputy in charge of planning matters.
Although many people seem to find that they can dismiss the issue very easily, it is an issue that has become critical. I think that our committee system is hanging on this particular issue. It is something that ought to be resolved. It is a great shame that the quality of this report has been diminished greatly because Mr Jensen was not prepared to compromise and the Chief Minister was not prepared to compromise as well in allowing him to step aside and perhaps have Dr Kinloch or Mr Stefaniak take the chair of these committees.
In rereading my own dissenting report, I found that I actually misspelt the names of Butler, Mant and Syme. I apologise to those people. I was given the report from the committees on Tuesday night after the Assembly adjourned. I came back here on Wednesday morning and wrote the report. I started at 5 o'clock on Wednesday morning and continued, with the secretary breathing down my neck, waiting for the report. They were very patient with me. In fact, they photocopied the rest of the report and then came back and photocopied mine and added that to it. I appreciate their understanding and their tolerance. It gave me the opportunity to write what, at first glance, may be some extensive comments but, in fact, barely touch on the range of issues that the legislation raises.
Of course, we will have the opportunity in this Assembly to debate it clause by clause. I believe, in the direction that we are going, that that will now be necessary, unless the Government sees fit to adopt my first recommendation. That recommendation is to try to get this report done properly with enough time, and to establish a select
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