Page 1918 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 14 June 1994
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Next I would like to quote from page 4459 of Hansard. I will tell you who said this after I have read the quote. The quote goes this way:
The simple tenet is not to have a public service Act - or an Act of administration, if you like - which becomes burdensome by its prescription. That is an important point for us to remember. We do not want to end up with a public service Act of 300 or 400 pages outlining in a very prescriptive manner every single possibility that may arise in the ACT public service over the next five decades, because invariably under such legislation things become too bureaucratic and it becomes an inhibition on effective and efficient management within the public sector.
They are very fine words. Who said that? None other than the current Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Lamont, who was a member of the committee that went interstate. He said, "We do not want to end up with hundreds of pages of legislation". What have we got? We have hundreds of pages of legislation. In addition, at a quarter past six last Friday night, in order to show everybody what a wonderful piece of legislation this was, we got 109 amendments from the Chief Minister. Her own Bill requires at least 109 amendments.
Mrs Carnell: She did not tell Mr Berry, though, that she had 109 amendments, did she?
MR DE DOMENICO: No, she did not tell Mr Berry that she had 109 amendments. She told everybody else - those who were at the Assembly at a quarter past six on a Friday night and those who were not, by shoving the amendments under their doors. I was still here. I was just about to buy the fish and chips.
Mr Humphries: You would have had something to wrap them in.
MR DE DOMENICO: The Government has 109 amendments to a Bill that was supposed to be the bee's knees. "Not negotiable", said the Chief Minister. In fact, Mr Humphries makes a good point. Perhaps the only thing that this Bill is good for is wrapping the fish and chips in. It is not good for anything else. I challenge anybody to stand up in this place and explain to me exactly what the 109 amendments are all about and exactly how they relate to this Bill. Can anyone explain to me what changed Mr Lamont's mind on the inevitable road to Damascus? Last year, when he was a backbencher, he stood up in this Assembly and said that, based on his experience in going to South Australia and the Northern Territory with the committee, the last thing we wanted was superfluous legislation going into detail on every fine point, because it would become cumbersome and inflexible. As Mr Kaine so adequately put it, and as I am suggesting, Madam Speaker, that is exactly what we have got - an inflexible, cumbersome piece of legislation.
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