Page 2378 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 June 1994
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MR KAINE (5.00): I must say that when I first read this Bill clauses 46, 50 and 51 gave me more personal trouble than any others because we are accustomed to a form of government where the Executive and the legislature are separate from each other, and quite distinctly so. Here we have a Bill that gives the Executive the power and the responsibility to appoint, to suspend, to remove, or to retire the Clerk of the Assembly. It is a most unusual provision in a system based on the British Westminster system.
Mr Stevenson: Not if you have the numbers.
MR KAINE: That is true. When I was trying to figure out how to resolve the issue I came to the same conclusion probably that the Government came to. Under our arrangements there really is not anybody else that can do it. I suppose that we could have said that the appointment, suspension, removal and retirement of the clerk will be the responsibility of the Assembly, but that would give this Assembly an executive function that it should not have either. This is a legislative body. It should not be involved in such functions as these. I was prepared to go along with the general proposition that in the absence of a better proposal, and I could not think of one, we probably had to go along with this; but it was still at the back of my mind that it was inherently wrong.
I think that the amendment put forward by Mr Humphries goes a long way to resolving the issue in my mind. First of all, the Executive should make the appointment on the advice of the appropriate standing committee of the Assembly. I think that is appropriate. There is a presumption there that the Executive would not reject or act differently from a proposal put forward by an Assembly committee. Also, if we adopt the proposition that this should merely be merit based and that there should be no other considerations, that resolves to some degree the issue in my mind. I think this will go a long way to improving the Bill in regard to these matters.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (5.03): The Government is not opposed to this amendment, Madam Speaker.
Amendment agreed to.
MR HUMPHRIES (5.03): I move amendment No. 11, circulated in Mrs Carnell's name, which reads as follows:
11. Page 24, line 24, add the following subclause:
"(4) The Clerk is not subject to direction by the Executive in relation to the performance of his or her duties.".
Madam Speaker, it would appear, on the face of clause 46, for it to be possible, since the clerk is appointed, in fact, by the Executive, for the clerk to be subject, like other positions appointed by the Executive, to direction by the Executive. I think we have a strange kind of hump-backed camel here that is part one thing and part the other.
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