Page 2918 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 September 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Almost every portfolio of this Government is littered with examples of where the so-called consultation process has broken down irretrievably. The best example, though, Mr Deputy Speaker, I think, has to be last year's Electoral Bill. The Government produced - obviously, without a skerrick of consultation with anybody - a Bill before this Assembly which, as we all know, bastardised the Hare-Clark electoral system. The Government, a week later, under intense public pressure, had to back down. Could you characterise that as a change in government policy generated by consultation? Of course, Mr Deputy Speaker, by no stretch of that definition could you call it that.
Mr Kaine: It was blowtorch on the belly time.
MR HUMPHRIES: It was, as Mr Kaine says, a blowtorch on the belly that caused Ms Follett to back down. In the end, she did not say to this community, "We respond to community pressure by changing our view on this issue". She ended up saying, "We do not have the numbers on the floor of the house". I think on Matthew Abraham's show she also said, "Nobody ever told me that they did not like my ideas for above-the-line voting. Nobody ever told me that they did not like above-the-line voting".
Mr Kaine: She spoke only to Wayne Berry.
MR HUMPHRIES: She, obviously, spoke only to Mr Berry. It was practically the Bastille over at the old Assembly building - people clamouring to say to this Government, "You got it wrong". But, no, this Government did not say, "Yes, we got it wrong because people have told us so". This Government said, "We are backing down because we do not have the numbers".
Mr Deputy Speaker, to suggest that this Government has any view remotely sympathetic to genuine consultation is a simple joke. The non-committal generality and blandness in which this entire document is couched is disturbing. If agencies are meant to take heed of how they should better consult in the future, a much better approach surely would have been to identify good and bad examples from the past so that we could illuminate some of the points being made in this document. That is not there. There is no example in this document of how you would conduct effective consultation with this Government, except to shout from the rooftops a la the Electoral Bill last year.
I have to say, Mr Deputy Speaker, that, if the Government is playing catch-up to the Opposition because it knows that community referenda are a much more valid way of finding out what people in this community actually think and of making sure that the Government does not just listen but sits up and pays attention, it is going to be running very fast to try to catch up with our proposals in this area.
Ms Follett: Before I speak, Mr Deputy Speaker, Mr Humphries quoted from a letter at the very beginning of his remarks. I would ask him to table it.
MR HUMPHRIES: I seek leave to do so, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Leave granted.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .