Page 5416 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 3 December 1991
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MR WOOD (Minister for Education and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (4.32): Mr Speaker, the Government opposes this proposal. It is one that the Assembly must give the most serious consideration. I believe that a lot of the amendments proposed by Mr Jensen are genuine in that they are based on his notion of consultation. I think he has overdone it; but I acknowledge how genuine his amendments are. But I think this amendment presents the most grave difficulties.
Mr Jensen's party wanted a committee system. It was one of their very serious options when this parliament was first instituted. We have not gone down that path of government by committee. We have a very strong committee system; but the committees are committees of the parliament, not of the Government. There may have been some speculation in the days before the first Government was formed, but no-one has ever suggested since that we go down the path of government by committee. Yet this amendment is a potent step to take us down that line. When the Alliance Government was in power it did not propose government by committee, and it did not institute anything so to do.
This amendment has very serious ramifications for reasonable expectations of how things may proceed in this Territory. It means that, once the Planning Authority has considered a matter, it automatically goes to the PDI committee not just once but again later on.
Mr Jensen: No, that is not proposed. It is not necessary later on. Only once is enough.
MR WOOD: You are proposing that every variation, no matter how minor or how major, go to that committee before the Executive can place a mark on it. You are proposing an alternative government. You have no date on this. It could be blocked in a committee; it could be stymied there indefinitely. You are proposing what you refused to give when you were in government. You are taking the role of government.
Nowhere else in Australia does this apply. Nowhere else where there is a Westminster system does this apply, and for very good reasons. Out of confusion last week an amendment was agreed to in this Assembly that allowed this to occur temporarily. We have perhaps been fortunate in that, because we have seen what a mess it can make of things. I have had complaints in this Assembly today about that procedure and how it operated in practice.
Mr Jensen: You tried to play it, Bill.
MR WOOD: I tried to do the right thing. Confusion reigned. If you write this provision permanently into legislation, you will be doing great damage to the normal and proper way that things proceed in the ACT. You will be setting up a whole new process, and you will clog up the
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