Page 1851 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 15 June 1993
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Mr Berry: No. You do not appoint people; you just knock them off.
MR DE DOMENICO: No. The elected representatives of this Assembly, Mr Berry, will have their say, notwithstanding your intemperate comments to me just then. The amendments will prevent Ministers and members, of whatever political persuasion, from not doing the right thing and appointing people with the necessary expertise. After all, we are talking about a company, for want of a better word, that is turning over $85m a year; and the money is going directly to the people of the ACT, who are putting money in by betting and doing other things.
We believe that what we propose is a responsible way of doing it. There are precedents for this sort of thing. We also believe that perhaps it is something that the Government ought to look very closely at in appointing whomever they want to appoint to all sorts of boards and instrumentalities. These amendments mean that the elected members of the community, the members of the Assembly, will finally have a say as to what happens. No-one in their right mind would disagree with the amendments that I am so happy to move.
MR BERRY (Minister for Health, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (10.41): Madam Speaker, the Government will be opposing these amendments because they are, in principle, bad law. Just work out how these people opposite think. All they are interested in is knocking people off the board, not in going through the process of appointing people as is required by the legislation, which states:
A member shall be a person having appropriate qualifications and experience having regard to the functions of the Board.
The Government is given the responsibility for appointing those people. All that members opposite want is the ability to knock them off. They do not share any of the responsibility of appointing people. All they want to do is to be able to knock people off.
Mr Kaine: It is funny. We always consulted with you about these appointments, and you thought that was all right.
MR BERRY: Not once. All you want to do is knock people off. The amendments refer to the Subordinate Laws Act, which refers to instruments of a legislative nature, not to appointments of individuals to manage government instrumentalities. Appointments are an entirely different matter and cannot be seen to be in the same boat. It is entirely inappropriate to use a law which is designed for legislative matters to undo appointments which are made by the Government. If you want to make good law, go about it in a different way. Draw up a new piece of law which deals with the issue, but do not use inappropriate laws.
Appointments are matters of an executive nature. The only case where this has been done before is in relation to appointments under the Electoral Act 1992. It was appropriate then because of the subject of the Act. That was an entirely different matter, you will all agree. In practice, Madam Speaker, it would be an administrative nightmare if these amendments were carried. When would an
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