Page 3371 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 24 November 1992
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Mr Humphries says that it is a test of the honesty of the people being appointed; but the fact that it is there in the legislation, to me, strongly implies that there has to be some sort of scrutiny by the people making the appointment as well. I, for one, do not believe that that level of examination of a person's credentials is appropriate, given the fact that I will be supporting Mr Moore's amendment, given the fact that Mr Moore's amendment would allow full scrutiny of those appointments in this Assembly and disallowance of them, and also given the fact that, as I have said, I am prepared to support the second part of Mr Humphries's proposal which does ask that these appointments be the subject of consultation with other parties and members in the Assembly. I think that is protection enough. I believe that the difficulties of implementation of Mr Humphries's subclause (2A) really do militate against it and, as I say, the Government will be opposing it.
MS SZUTY (8.59): I rise to support Mr Humphries's amendment in this instance. The reason I support it is that I regard proposed subclause (2A) as a clearing house, as an opportunity for this Assembly to screen, in the first instance, people whom we may consider to be inappropriate for positions on the Electoral Commission. Proposed subclause (2B) talks about the leader of each political party represented in the Assembly and members of the Assembly who are not members of such a party being consulted, and we also have an amendment proposed by Mr Moore, who would make this particular provision a disallowable instrument. I believe that proposed subclause (2A) actually strengthens the provision even further and gives us the opportunity to screen out certain people before they even get to the consultation or disallowance stage.
MR MOORE (9.00): Madam Speaker, this is an amendment that Mr Humphries made available to us quite some time ago. I must say that my position on it has oscillated somewhat. At times I have felt that it is a particularly important amendment and at other times I have thought, "Is it really necessary?". When we look at it in the light of disallowance, that gives us, first of all, 15 sitting days in which to assess whether somebody does fit into these categories, along with the other protections. Fifteen sitting days is in the order of three months. If disallowance is moved, there are another 15 sitting days. That gives us in the order of six months. That being the case, I have determined to oppose this amendment because I feel that we will have done enough.
Ms Follett raised the issue of supporters of Independents. In the original version that Mr Humphries circulated he had a paragraph (c), which read, "has at any time during the last 5 years electioneered on behalf of such a candidate". He was talking about any candidate who had run in an Assembly election. I think that that would have been a fairer version. Perhaps Mr Humphries will have the opportunity to indicate that this is not the case, but I understand that he had some difficulty with the word "electioneered". We had some debate over that, as Mr Humphries will remember. I indicated that if I were going to support this he would have to have something along those lines in order for it to be equitable. From my perspective, I can think of a range of people who would be ineligible or ought to be ineligible under the guidelines that Mr Humphries proposes for other parties.
Therefore, I have come back to relying more heavily on the disallowable instrument, which I think is a very powerful force - we will debate that in a short while - and also Mr Humphries's proposed subclause 2B, which is very sensible, namely, having to go through that consultation process in which somebody's political allegiance should come out. If somebody's political allegiance is so
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