Page 3376 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 24 November 1992
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This provides for the other end of the scale. We have had protections put in place to make sure that the person appointed is a person beyond reproach. I think that was the expression that was used. We are now talking of the other end of the scale where a government finds itself in some position of antagonism with an electoral commissioner and wishes to rid itself, as it were, of a particular person who might be less than cooperative, in the Government's eyes, with the Government's program.
Regrettably, these sorts of people do come along. I say "regrettably" because we have been in government as well. On occasions governments like to be able to take the option of taking that step to get the burr from under their saddle.
Mr Connolly: You never said that when you were in government, though, Gary.
MR HUMPHRIES: Well, I am honest now that I am out of government.
Mr Moore: What a statement! Would you like to repeat that?
MR HUMPHRIES: I hope that that is not on the record, Madam Speaker.
Mrs Grassby: That is on the record. Do not worry about it, Gary. It is well and truly on the record and we will always remember it.
Mr Lamont: Can we check that Hansard got that or can you repeat it?
Mr Moore: Don't worry. We will repeat it in our speeches.
MR HUMPHRIES: I think I might be misquoted, Madam Speaker. I had better check with the Hansard people before it is printed tomorrow.
Mrs Grassby: We will make sure that it goes in, Gary. You said it.
Mr Moore: Don't you worry. We can all repeat it, Gary.
Mr De Domenico: I do not think that microphone is working.
MR HUMPHRIES: No, I do not think the microphone here is working. I do not know what is wrong with it.
Madam Speaker, the fact of life is that those sorts of tensions will arise from time to time between governments and particular statutory appointees. In this particular case we feel that that appointment ought not to be one which can be terminated, as it were, at the will of the Executive. This should be an appointment which is protected to a large extent by well-established processes which require that the Government justify itself before the Assembly in the same way as it justified itself on the original appointment.
In other words, the Government must come back to the Assembly and establish that a particular person has committed some act of misbehaviour which does warrant that person's removal from the office of commissioner.
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