Page 3384 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 24 November 1992
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Amendments agreed to.
Clause, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 45
MR HUMPHRIES (9.42), by leave: Madam Speaker, I move:
Page 15, line 30 -
Omit "present", substitute "cause".
Before "Commission's" insert "augmented".
After "Commission's report" insert "to be presented".
Before "Commission" insert "augmented".
This is a small amendment. It simply makes it possible for the Chief Minister to cause to be presented to the Assembly a copy of the commission's report if he or she is absent from the chamber for whatever reason - sickness or something of that kind.
Amendments agreed to.
Clause, as amended, agreed to.
Proposed new clause 45A
MR HUMPHRIES (9.44): Madam Speaker, I move:
Page 15, line 33, before clause 46 insert in Part V the following clause:
Head of Administration to provide assistance etc.
"45A. The Head of Administration shall comply with any request by the Electoral Commission, the Electoral Commissioner or an augmented Commission for information or assistance reasonably required for the purposes of this Act.".
Madam Speaker, proposed new clause 45A is to provide some measures that would assist a commissioner if he or she were beleaguered in a situation of conflict with a government that was hostile to him or her. It may be, given the protections we have put in place already, that a government would not attempt to remove a commissioner in those circumstances but might try to make his or her job very difficult by denying him or her access to the other arms of government which have to cooperate with that person's job to make it happen.
This is designed to make sure that the administration, the pinnacle of which is the Head of Administration, is required to cooperate with reasonable requests for assistance or information for the purposes of the Act which emanate from the commissioner. This is designed to make sure that that commissioner can require that ballot-papers, for example, be printed for an election; can require that public servants provide information that he or she will need to make that decision; can require that schools be made available as polling places for an election.
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