Page 1706 - Week 06 - Thursday, 13 August 1992
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MR HUMPHRIES: It is disallowable, Mr Lamont, after the decision has been made, not before. The decision is made, the circus is banned, and we have a say long after the thing is a fait accompli. That is the point. The Minister hears in the middle of December that Freddy's fiord horse circus is arriving in town in the middle of January and he issues a regulation saying that fiord horses are a prohibited circus animal. The Assembly has no capacity to question that matter until it resumes at the beginning of February, or whenever it might be.
Mr Lamont: Nonsense!
MR HUMPHRIES: It is not nonsense. It is exactly what happens.
Mr Wood: I can answer your question.
MR HUMPHRIES: That will be a change. Madam Speaker, the fact is that in those circumstances we would miss out on that activity. This has been an enormously controversial matter of inestimable heartburn to our whole community. Let us make sure that any further debates on what animals we are going to ban take place here in the Assembly, not in a suite on the fifth floor of this building.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (5.36): Madam Speaker, this is what we are complaining about; this is the level to which this debate has been reduced. I could say to you flippantly that, when Freddy's fiord horses come, I will consult you, Mr Humphries, because that is about the level of the debate that you have raised. I think the disallowable instrument is entirely appropriate. As a Minister for this Territory, you did not come into this Assembly and want to talk to everybody about the whole range of rather routine administrative matters that you agreed to.
MR STEVENSON (5.37): Madam Speaker, this amendment, which henceforth will be known as the armadillo amendment, has a number of problems. It is not, by any means, a minor thing. Mr Wood, the Minister, refers to this as a rather routine matter. It may be routine for the Minister to be able to ban animals from appearing in circuses, whatever they are, because they are undefined within the Act, in the ACT; but it is certainly not a routine matter for people who may want to watch the particular animals perform or people who may want to operate whatever it is that is described as a circus.
I can well understand that many Ministers feel that legislation, largely, should be done by way of regulation. This tedious, boring activity called parliamentary debate could well be done away with. Ministers, in their great, godlike wisdom - I suppose it is reasonable to say that - should be able to determine these matters. We, the Assembly, might have some other view after the decision has been made and the Minister has said, "Listen, this is how it is going to be". We have to come along and present some argument that it should not be like that, after the mind has been made up without open debate.
Mr Lamont: This is repetitive, Dennis.
MR STEVENSON: Mr Lamont says that this is repetitive. There should be fair debate. Members of this Assembly should make the laws on behalf of the people of Canberra. We should make the laws. The Ministers should not have whatever powers they would like to have. Many Ministers in governments would like far
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