Page 5079 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 27 November 1991
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Mr Berry: Have you any connections with them? Tell us whether you have any connections with them.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Stevenson!
MR STEVENSON: Relevance?
MR SPEAKER: No; if you would stop for a moment, I will be able to be heard. Mr Berry, please desist. Mr Stevenson, proceed.
MR STEVENSON: Once again, I think it is deplorable. The more people know about what goes on in this Assembly, with people trying to denigrate by association, the better they will be able to understand what is truly happening in this Assembly and what the Labor Party are truly on about: ideological, not democratic, goals.
One other important aspect of any Bill that comes before this Assembly is that we have the opportunity for a briefing with the drafters of the legislation, an opportunity to gain assistance with amendments to the legislation. I think it would be ideal if we were able to have time to send the Bills out to all those in the community we felt were interested and ask them to suggest any amendments; or with our own amendments, if they are major, if we could send them out to people in the community and ask them whether they agree with them.
That is democracy. What we get in this Assembly again and again, ramming Bills through, is not democracy. It is not giving people in Canberra an opportunity for consultation. It is not giving members in this Assembly an opportunity to do their job correctly. It is not democratic. I have brought the matter up twice before in this Assembly because Bills were being rammed through, and I will continue to bring it up while ever Bills are rammed through. I will go further, perhaps, and make sure that we amend the legislation so that Bills cannot be rammed through the Assembly without fair and democratic consultation with the people in the community, whom we should represent but usually do not.
MR BERRY (Minister for Health and Minister for Sport) (3.18): I want to touch on a few things that will take me only a couple minutes. I do not want to avoid a discussion of the no-name Bill - the Bill that will eventually be named the Equal Opportunity Bill or something else. Mr Stevenson has introduced one private member's Bill a number of times. I will give some statistics on the Labor Party which demonstrate that what Mr Stevenson is on about is a lot of rubbish.
Between 13 February 1990 and 12 December 1990 the average time between introduction and date of passage was 21 days; between 13 December 1990 and 27 November 1991 the average time was 25 days. So, there is not much difference there. As for Bills introduced and passed in the same sitting
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