Page 1388 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 12 May 1993
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This Assembly is different - there is no question about that - from other parliaments in Australia and from local councils, and Mr Wood dealt with that particularly well. One of the interesting things is that he referred to the committee system, and the editorial in today's paper complimented this Assembly on the strength of its committee system. That is one thing that we have that works very much like a number of city councils, and effectively as far as city councils go, but it is the one thing that Mr Stevenson will not participate in. There is the irony; there is the hypocrisy of this sort of motion.
The next point I would like to make is that there is a growing interest in Australia in the notion of regional government as opposed to State government. Historically we have been formed through State governments, so no doubt that will remain for quite some time; but there is growing interest in a regional style of government. Members of parliament that I talk to from other States are very interested in what happens in the ACT in the sense of a regional government. There are only two levels of government here and they think it is very interesting. Most of them who take the time to have a look at what goes on here are particularly complimentary.
I think that is one of the ironies of this sort of issue being raised by the new Leader of the Opposition. But I have conceded that she has backed down today. She has backed down very considerably from her position, and I think appropriately so. It is an important position in terms of image and it is appropriate to quote the editorial from the Canberra Times today. It said:
Any continuing image problem of the second Assembly is probably most contributed to by the musical chairs of the Liberal Party.
Mr Connolly: I am sorry; I did not catch that. Could you run that again?
MR MOORE: The musical chairs of the Liberal Party. We can see them more effectively here than anywhere else. It also pointed out that this particular attempt at populism by Mrs Carnell was mischievous, and I think that that is right. We have seen that sort of mischievousness from Mr Stevenson for the last four years and it has been pushed into a corner and, by and large, ignored, quite appropriately. But it is entirely inappropriate to run that sort of line from the position of Leader of the Opposition, so it is refreshing that we have had such a backdown today.
I think the best thing to do to make everybody happy is to move an amendment to this motion, but I want a bit more time for consultation with other members before I move it. I will foreshadow what I would be interested in doing. We can talk about it over the next few weeks, or months, or years, or whatever. Mr Stevenson's motion reads:
That this Assembly calls on the Commonwealth Parliament to take the necessary actions ...
Instead of talking of what he has talked about, we could take out those other words and put in, "to replace our name of Legislative Assembly with the name Legislative Council", and then everybody would be happy. We could have a legislative council. That is the issue I will leave you with.
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