Page 3736 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 9 December 1992
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I have no argument with any of this. But where have we got flexibility? The Chief Minister gave one example, the Bail Bill, which just happened to come up today. Within five days of the closing down of this sitting of the Assembly, we get our first piece of legislative flexibility. Furthermore, this side of the house was accused by the Chief Minister of holding up some of the legislation, and Mr Connolly went into another one of his - - -
Mr De Domenico: Hysterical performances.
MR CORNWELL: - - - hysterical outbursts about the Adoption Bill. Again, it would appear as the sole example of this Opposition's delaying and holding up of legislation. We are missing the point if that is the reason for the criticism, because we are not talking about holding up legislation; we are talking about the Government introducing it. We cannot hold up legislation that has not been introduced.
Mr Connolly: No, but as soon as we introduce it you hold it up.
MR CORNWELL: He is back again on the Adoption Bill. This is the problem, Madam Speaker. We cannot hold up something that has not been introduced, and the debate today - the matter of public importance - is highlighting the fact that this Government has failed to introduce anything like the number of pieces of legislation it said it would. The reformist legislation Mr Connolly speaks of is down to a lousy 28.5 per cent of the Bills they promised to introduce. Of the total number of pieces of legislation that they are proposing, and it is set out here in this budget paper and runs to quite a number of pages - which I note are unnumbered - only something like 31 are new pieces of legislation. The rest are amendments. Frankly, I do not know whether these amendments are major or minor; but I think we can probably assume, because there are so many of them, that some of them would be relatively minor amendments. Where are they? Why have you not introduced them? Whether they are major or minor, we assume that they are important to your legislative program of reformist government. So, why have you not introduced the minor ones?
Mr De Domenico: Because they have not got the numbers in Cabinet; that is why.
MR CORNWELL: Thank you, Mr De Domenico. That would appear to be the problem. It is not a want of legislative draftsmen. We know that there are very competent legislative draftsmen. Indeed, members of the Opposition and members on the cross benches have benefited often from the use of the legislative draftsmen.
Mr De Domenico: We use them often - 10 out of 13 of the Bills here.
MR CORNWELL: As Mr De Domenico indicates, some 10 of the 13 Bills on our list at the moment are private members Bills from the Opposition or the cross benches that have been drawn up by the legislative draftsmen. So, it is no want of ability on their part. What it comes back to is that the Cabinet cannot decide what to bring in and what not to bring in, and one can only assume that this is because of the deep divisions in the ranks of the Government, where we have a problem between the Left, the Right and the Centre. They cannot work out their legislative priority because they have different reformist pressures being placed on them by their various factions. Please, would you mind leaving your factions at home, get on with the business of governing this Territory, and bring in some legislation that we will be only too happy to debate with you.
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