Page 3690 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 October 1991
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I think those more responsible and rational members of this Assembly ought to think very carefully about the proposition put forward by Mr Stevenson and what it will lead to, if we accept his logic and his argument. I think it is quite bizarre and irrational. It denies entirely 2 years' worth of hard work to establish the credentials of our committee system. It suggests that we throw all that out the window on a whim of Mr Stevenson. I do not think the responsible members of this Assembly will buy that argument. It should be rejected outright and we should get back to a logical debate about what the real membership of this committee ought to be to allow it to get on with its work, without imposing a 24-hour-a-day burden, seven days a week, on all 17 members of this Assembly to keep up with the committee work and all the other business that goes on.
If you were going to do your job right and you were a member of a committee of the whole, you had better be there. You had better not be off the floor of the Assembly when a committee of the whole was meeting. I think it is the height of absurdity to suggest that committees should become committees of the whole.
MR BERRY (Deputy Chief Minister) (4.34): As I have said previously, the issue here is ensuring all members of the Assembly who have an interest in the Administration and Procedures Committee access to the processes of that committee. There is a tradition in political parties, and none so warm as in the Labor Party, about dealing with people who may be described as defectors. There are some people who have changed from one party to another and there is some heat, I think, between members of the Assembly. It is therefore, in my view, appropriate that single members of the Assembly have access to the processes of the Administration and Procedures Committee.
We see an instance where Mrs Nolan is to be excluded, and she is concerned about that. I am not so concerned about it, but it is a matter for her. She will be a single private member in the Assembly and I suspect that she will be seeking to have her own private members' business included on the agenda of this Assembly. If she is not represented in some way on the Administration and Procedures Committee, it could be said that she would not get a fair shake in terms of the way the committee deliberates on its business. I am not trying to reflect badly on the Administration and Procedures Committee. It is a fairly simple deduction that, if somebody is not represented and there is some heat between the parties, private members may not get a fair go in relation to private members' business. That is just one instance.
The other issue I raised earlier was that Mr Moore had not been given notice of this matter. On that score, perhaps leave ought not to have been granted for the matter to come on. It is a matter that affects him as well. What is
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