Page 5419 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 3 December 1991
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Mr Jensen: No, it has not. That is a new one.
MR WOOD: I was responding to the spirit of this Assembly. I will repeat that forever. You tell us, "We will consider variations, but do not expect us necessarily to churn them out. If we want to, we will sit on them for as long as we like". Do not forget that we also have the ability for the committee, once it has been through the normal process of the Executive, to consider any variation it wishes and we have added to the processes the deemed disallowance provision which requires any draft variation to be debated in this Assembly, so there are more - - -
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Wood! Members, I do not think it is appropriate for Ministers and others to discuss matters across the barriers to the public gallery.
MR WOOD: The deemed disallowance provision and the reference to the Planning Committee give ample scope for debate. I think we should uphold the well-established principles of the Westminster system and reject this crazy amendment.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (4.44): The history of this particular amendment that Mr Jensen has put forward is very short indeed. In fact, it has all happened within the last 24 hours. The reason for it is not the reason put forward by the Minister - that we will unreasonably delay the response and take too long to come back. The reason why it is there is that we find it unacceptable that the Minister impose a 24-hour turnaround on considering a very complex and very controversial variation. The problem is not the one that the Minister is putting forward, but in fact the very opposite of it.
Again I say that I believe that the members of this Assembly, by and large, are pretty reasonable people, and none of us are going to take a variation, particularly one that we know to have some sensitivity, and just sit on it or just shelve it. It might happen in other parliaments, but the committees of other parliaments are perhaps not under day-to-day scrutiny as members of this Assembly are. Just as every member of this Assembly is under scrutiny 24 hours a day by the media and others, our committees are under pretty close scrutiny as well. They simply would not get away with the kind of delaying tactics that the Minister is referring to, even were they of a mind to play those games, and I am quite sure that they would not be.
I understand the Minister's concern. If I were the Minister, I would probably feel the same way; but I think it is something that we have to try. If it works, I think it will turn out to be beneficial to those people who have an interest in these matters. If it does not work, if it is broke, fix it.
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