Page 1581 - Week 05 - Thursday, 18 April 1991
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committee of this Assembly to actually look at this issue properly, and to ensure that there is no conflict between the chair of the committee and the Executive Deputy with charge of that matter.
I believe that we have had a very cynical Government in this exercise. The cynicism of the Government has been demonstrated most clearly in the last round of sittings, when the Chief Minister sat at that table and waved a copy of the single Bill around. He waved it around. He realised how little time his committees had. Nobody received a copy of that single Bill until something like two weeks ago. If that is not a cynical exercise, and if it was not designed to ensure that this report was inadequate, then why did he take that approach? It was a cynical exercise, designed specifically to muck up the work of these committees, because the Bill itself is conservative - held by a conservative government - instead of us having a bipartisan approach which had been established originally by Rosemary Follett when she was Chief Minister. There was only lip service paid to a bipartisan approach by this Chief Minister and by Mr Jensen as Executive Deputy in charge of planning.
The other part that demonstrates the extreme cynicism of this Chief Minister is the fact that he had a legal opinion from the Melbourne firm of Dunhill, Madden and Butler, which was not handed to the committees until only seven days ago. It is an absolutely appalling lack of concern for the processes of this parliament and the processes of the committees. Had that information been presented to the committees a week earlier, or two weeks earlier, then I am sure that the committees may have considered questioning that firm of solicitors, because the sort of praises that they heaped upon the Bill really need to be questioned. The sorts of questions that go with that are: What do they know about planning in Canberra? What do they know about the leasehold system? What is their understanding of the way things operate in Canberra, which is so different from every other place in Australia?
Their report indicates to me that they knew very little. I believe that a reasonable cross-examination of them would have shown them up for having done a second-rate job, because it is a second-rate job that they have provided. Instead of drawing attention to ways in which the Bills could be improved, they have said, "It is a wonderful set of Bills". They have taken the easy way out and these committees have not taken the opportunity to take them to task, to question them, to double-check what they are saying and to investigate just how well they had looked at those Bills and just how well they had been able to come to grips with the issues that face Canberra.
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