Page 4343 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 30 November 1994
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Madam Speaker, I am advised, in fact, that one of the two ladies affected by this legislation is present in the gallery today. It is not often that we have the opportunity of passing a piece of legislation such that the immediate benefit flows through to somebody who is present at the time. This is a piece of legislation which really affects only two people, but it affects them very deeply indeed. I think that members should be very grateful that we have had the opportunity to be able to assist this woman in this way - in this quite clear fashion - and to do so with, it appears, the unanimous support of the house. I thank members for that support.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.
Bill agreed to.
STANDING ORDERS 171 AND 172 - PROPOSED AMENDMENTS
Debate resumed from 9 November 1994, on motion by Mr Stevenson.
MR CORNWELL (12.14): Madam Speaker, I ended my comments on 9 November by saying that I did not really believe that a 60-day delay, as proposed by Mr Stevenson, was necessary, because 18 of the 22 orders of the day listed on the notice paper had been on the notice paper for longer than two months. Therefore, it does not seem to me to be necessary that we should amend the standing orders to allow a 60-day period to elapse before a matter is debated. It is happening already, whether we like it or not.
The second point upon which I would urge caution in accepting these amendments is that we can already declare a Bill urgent - and I think this house has done so in the past - but why would we wish to complicate matters further by having to declare more Bills urgent? In addition, I am not at all sure what "a minor administrative matter" would be in relation to legislation. I could imagine that that in itself would involve this Assembly in long and tedious debates, probably for a duration beyond the time needed to conclude the matters that we were proposing to regard as urgent. It therefore seems to me that there is no real justification for amending standing orders in the way proposed by Mr Stevenson.
There are other means of keeping the community aware of what is going on in this house. In fact, I suggested a new initiative, which was a public interest list that could be held perhaps by the Secretariat to advise people on that list when matters of concern for them came up. I think there are other and better ways of doing this than amending standing orders in the manner suggested. The amount of time spent in debating motions resulting from these amendments would be more than the amount of time saved in considering orders of the day if these steps were taken. I think we should leave matters as they are and see whether we can improve procedures by other means.
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