Page 5444 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 3 December 1991
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There may not necessarily be a report produced by the committee. The committee may respond, as the Public Accounts Committee does, by providing a recommendation or making a simple statement to the Assembly saying that they do not have a problem. In this case I think it is appropriate that such comments made by the committee to the Minister should be tabled as part of the documentation that is placed into the Assembly when the variation is signed by the Government.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (6.11): I find this rather curious because we have already provided that the Assembly committee will be given copies of variations for their consideration before the Executive makes its decision. The way that committees respond to that is to report to the Assembly. If we adopt this, the committee will report to the Assembly, that report will go to the Government, the Government will take it into account in making its Executive decision, and it then will be obliged to come back and table the report again.
Since the committee has already reported to the Assembly, I see little point in asking the Government to resubmit that report to the Assembly. It is already before the Assembly and it seems to me to be a waste of time, printing and effort to require the Government to resubmit it. I suggest, Mr Speaker, that this is a rather pointless amendment.
MR JENSEN (6.12): May I clarify something before Mr Wood speaks? I think it is important to remember that the information that is tabled in the Assembly, something along the lines of this, does not just stay in the Assembly; it goes out to quite a lot of people. This is the approval of the variation to the plan. I think it is appropriate that, if there is a letter from an Assembly committee, or a report that makes a comment on it, that be formally required to be included in the documentation that is tabled in the Assembly, because all that documentation is then available for someone who wants to look at it. It is a package; they do not have to go chasing elsewhere for it.
Mr Wood: It is available before that as well.
MR JENSEN: No. The report of the committee, or a letter from the committee to the Government, is not required at the moment to be included in this documentation. That is all I am saying.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (6.12): Mr Speaker, I take Mr Kaine's point. This is going to add to the expense. It really is a further pointer to the confusion, almost, that all this exercise, all these amendments, is going to add. The Government opposes this.
Amendments negatived.
Clause agreed to.
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