Page 3956 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 16 December 1992
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There were 11 other measures that were introduced in the penultimate sitting week and passed in the final sitting week. They included some extraordinarily major Bills, such as the Territory Owned Corporations Bill, which effected a major change to the way statutory organisations can conduct themselves. That is an issue of clear partisan divide between Labor and Opposition, and we have indicated that we are changing the TAB in that direction. I indicated earlier on that we would not be moving ACTEW to that TOC form, that we would keep it as a statutory authority.
Mr De Domenico: Because certain people told you that you were not allowed to do it.
MR CONNOLLY: I was always saying that, Mr De Domenico. So, a major piece of legislation, effecting a major change to the way commercial business enterprises are run, was introduced in the penultimate week and passed in the final week. If the Opposition is going to do some grandstanding and support Mr Stevenson's measure, it ought to examine its conduct when it was in office. There was a major Bill - the type of legislation Mr Stevenson would probably say best exemplifies his concern - a Bill making enormous changes to the way aspects of the city are run, introduced and passed in two sitting weeks by the Liberal Party. Liberal Party members, if you are going to put your hands up for Mr Stevenson, you had better examine how you conducted yourselves then.
Another Bill introduced by Mr Humphries in that penultimate week and passed in the final week, the Health Services Bill, made enormous changes to the way one of the most contentious areas of public administration, no matter who is in government, is administered. On the Territory Owned Corporations Bill, at the end of the day the Opposition allowed that; we did not object to that in principle. We raised some concerns, but we did not vote against it.
On the Health Services Bill, we did have a number of substantive concerns. I think Mr Moore had a few as well. That was a very long debate. It was debated over two or three days, with debates often going through till nearly midnight. In that last sitting week of 1990 we were all here very late for a number of nights. Again, a substantive piece of reform introduced by Mr Humphries, the Liberal Minister - exactly the sort of Bill that would, under Mr Stevenson's test, have required adjournment out to committee or two months of community consultation - was debated out within two weeks. On that measure we raised a number of substantive amendments; some clauses we supported, some clauses we sought amendments on. I cannot recall; there may even have been a couple of changes achieved as a result of that debate. But a major debate occurred.
If the Liberal Party today is going to say, "Yes, we support Mr Stevenson; it is a matter of high principle that legislation not be introduced and passed other than within a two-month timeframe", they really would have difficulty looking in that mirror and seeing what they did when they were in government. Madam Speaker, I am not criticising what they did when they were in government. At the time, the Opposition supported most of those measures. We may have gone out and opened our "How to Conduct Yourself in Opposition" to the fast-fast page and made a few points like that, but the Hansard will show that in the chamber the Opposition debated each of those Bills on its merits. I do not think we even attempted then the ruse of referring them to committees.
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