Page 5013 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 26 November 1991
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (12.47 am): Mr Speaker, on receiving this amendment an hour or so ago - although I note that it was drafted in October and has not been circulated to members before this - I circulated it to the Government's advisers. I have been searching for an appropriate word to describe it, and no word commends itself better than "weird". This is a weird proposal. What Mr Collaery is proposing to do is abdicate the responsibility of politicians and transfer it to the courts.
His proposal relates to a fundamental political distinction. It is one on which we will have disagreements. Clearly, we do have disagreements and, no doubt, we will be going to the electorate on 15 February on the issue of the appropriate allocation of funds to government schools and non-government schools and the way in which that funding is distributed to the non-government schools - whether it is a fair and reasonable appropriation of money. We say that what we have done is fair and reasonable, and you say that what we have done is not fair and reasonable. We believe that the voters will endorse our political decision and you, no doubt, believe that the voters will endorse yours.
Mr Kaine: And I cannot wait for some judge to decide that.
MR CONNOLLY: Yes, it is the ordinary political process. What Mr Collaery proposes is that a judge will decide that - that that fundamentally political decision about an appropriation of funds and the distribution of funds between government and non-government schooling ought to be decided by a judge, and that money appropriated cannot be applied unless this distribution is "fair and reasonable". How do we work out whether it is "fair and reasonable"? We go off to a judge, and then we have a process of appeal.
This is a fundamentally political decision. If we were to bring the judiciary into play on this sort of decision - if this parliament were disposed to such a strange proposal, and I am confident, having spoken to members around the place, that members will not be prepared to go down this peculiar track - we would be in a position where this fundamentally political decision, which we have a robust political debate over, would be held up through a process of judicial hearing, appeal and counter-appeal.
It is attempting to have judges decide the political merit of a decision on how money is applied between government and non-government schooling, which anyone with anything more than the most cursory knowledge of Australian politics would know has been an issue of political debate almost for the 100 years of the existence of the Australian Labor Party. Mr Collaery is seeking to make that a matter for decision by the courts. Of course, in his sort of
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