Page 1580 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 19 May 1993
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MR KAINE: The Clerk is right on the ball. I think that the Chief Minister's comments deserve some rejoinder. She attempted to make the point that members of the Opposition would never accept an explanation as being satisfactory, that the Government could never provide an answer that the members of the Opposition would find satisfactory. I think those were her words. That is an absurdity. It is only under certain circumstances, where within 30 days the Minister has not supplied an answer or has not explained why an answer cannot be provided in 30 days, that the consequences flow from this. There is no provision here for the Assembly to censure the Minister or to take some action of that kind because he or she has not provided a satisfactory answer. I think that the Chief Minister is making too much of it. In fact, Mr Moore has made the point that, generally speaking, answers come fairly quickly. Sometimes they do not come very comprehensively, and that is another matter; but they do come quickly.
At times, for inexplicable reasons, it takes an inordinately long time to get an answer to a question. In fact, earlier this year I asked the Chief Minister why it was that I had not received an answer to a question that had been on the notice paper for a year. Quite by coincidence, I am sure, the answer was provided the next day. One can only assume that perhaps an answer is sitting in the Minister's in-tray and he or she has not got around to looking at it yet, or perhaps the department has not taken a question as seriously as the member asking it might have regarded it. It is under circumstances such as that that a member ought to have the right to ask a Minister to account for the fact that a question has not been answered.
I do not expect that anybody on this side of the house is going to be unreasonable about it. When a question is asked it is reasonable to assume that you will get an answer and that you will get it quickly. Twelve months later is not good enough. Even three months later is not good enough very often, because the question can relate to a contemporary matter, something that is on the agenda right now. To get an answer in three months' time does not address the issue. The issue is over and done with by then.
In my view, the course of action that is being proposed here is not an unreasonable one. I think that the Government are a bit jittery because once in a while they will get caught out - and they will - and they can then be asked by the member to explain why they have not done it. The worst that can happen to them is that they get their memory jogged a bit, and I do not see anything harmful in that. I cannot imagine why anybody, including the members of the Government, would not support this proposal, because one day they are going to be in opposition and I am sure that they will find this provision very useful when they are.
MS SZUTY (11.23): Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I think it is a reasonable expectation of members of this Assembly that questions on the notice paper will have a fairly swift turnaround period. We are referring here to a limited number of members of this Assembly who are able to place questions on the notice paper for answer. Some non-government members use questions on the notice paper more extensively than others. I acknowledge that; that is all part of the parliamentary process. I have used questions on the notice paper to a limited extent thus far in this Assembly, and have asked questions of Ministers Berry, Wood and Connolly.
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