Page 1079 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 23 June 1992
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colleagues will accept that there is no need for us to carefully scrutinise legislation. We have, with the greatest respect, a long, long way to go before we reach that point. It was the same with legislation on Thursday. A Rates and Land Tax (Amendment) Bill introduced on Tuesday was to be debated into law on Thursday. That is not a happy situation. I really wonder how the Government, in particular the Chief Minister who introduced this Bill, can feel happy about that state of affairs.
The people of the Territory have some right to be exposed to these arguments as well. They have precisely 48 hours to work out what is going on and to encourage or not encourage their representatives in this place to pass that legislation. That really is not good enough. I do not want some flippant remark from across the chamber about how we have great legislation and we are really clever and so on. I want to see some real reason why we have to do these sorts of things in this way. It is just not good government.
Madam Speaker, I accept, of course, that some items on this program are important. It has been suggested, for example, that we need to put the essential services legislation through in this week of sitting because it is the last sitting week before we rise for our winter recess. That may well be. But, of course, by doing so we send an unmistakable signal to the public servants who attend the Government that this Assembly will put up with being the last and shortest phase of discussion and debate about proposed legislation. It is no mistake, it is no accident, that this legislation has come in so late when, in some cases, similar legislation in other jurisdictions has been debated long before this, or the issues being raised here have been canvassed long before this.
It is no coincidence that we are getting these things so late because, in effect, the public service, the bureaucracy, knows that this is the least important phase as far as it is concerned for getting approval. It is also the one that needs to be most avoided because it is the one where they might actually lose out if amendments are moved which are unacceptable. It may be, Madam Speaker, that some amendments that get made in this place are done in haste. We have seen already the Animal Welfare Bill amended at its eleventh hour, or proposed to be amended at its eleventh hour, because of a serious flaw apparently discovered in the scope of the Bill. These things do not just happen because someone has forgotten. They happen, in part, because there has not been sufficient time to make sure that we do the job correctly.
I hope, Madam Speaker, that I have said enough to convince those opposite that there needs to be a serious reconsideration of this policy. It really is not in the interests of democratic government and responsible decision making for us to be engaged in this kind of practice. I hope that the Government's act can be got together sufficiently for this not to be repeated in the next sitting of the Assembly. I indicate that if it is repeated in that sitting this Opposition will be far less prepared to accept those kinds of Bills, however urgent they might be, merely because the Government considers that the final stage, the legislative exposure stage, is the least important of all the stages legislation goes through.
MS SZUTY (3.35): As one of the two members elected to this Assembly as an Independent, I feel strongly about the issue of the time that needs to be taken to carefully consider Bills and to have input from relevant groups and individuals. I feel that it is a very important matter of principle that Bills are tabled in the Assembly and then allowed to lie on the table for some 60 days prior to final
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