Page 4743 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 7 December 1994
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It is clearly put in the EIR Bill; that is not difficult. Then it talks about the cost burden. It says:
... preparation of the "yes" and "no" cases, and, most controversially, the cost of advertising.
The CIR Bill does not require a Yes case and a No case to be put and does not require advertising, for the very reason of costs. These matters are already handled. Under the heading "CIR in the ACT", on page 19, it talks about a common argument made by critics of CIR. It says:
... it lacks the checks and balances built into the law-making procedures found in the Westminster system.
The difficulty is that there are not enough checks and balances. Politicians have been seeing themselves more and more as elitists in our society. (Extension of time granted) The truth of the matter is that the people can reconsider or challenge legislation when they choose. The report says:
The Committee considers that the Speaker's suggestions are worthy of further consideration ...
The Speaker brought up some ideas on how community consultation might be increased. If you allowed a minimum time between the introduction of legislation in the Assembly and the debate on it, I could not think of a better way that community consultation might be increased, apart from CIR. As we know, every member of this parliament, except me, voted against that. We could allow urgent matters or matters of a minor administrative nature to be brought on straightaway. I could go on and on. I could talk for a month on this subject. It is full of holes. I come back to the fact that the people drafting this report were not even aware that you cannot run a recall process in this Legislative Assembly.
I turn to the Liberals' Community Referendum Bill. At the end of the Democrats' submission, it says that the Bill leaves power in the hands of the Assembly. I agree. That is a CR Bill in a nutshell.
Mr Humphries: But there is no alternative, Dennis.
MR STEVENSON: Mr Humphries said, "There is no alternative". He must not have been listening when I handled that issue. The Assembly has the power to delegate authority, provided that we can amend it. That is what the law states. The other point is that there are steps all through the Bills that require decisions to be made. The EIR Bill places the power in the hands of the people. The CIR Bill places the power in the hands of - guess who - politicians. This is the very reason why people want CIR. We can all go along to politicians.
Members of this Assembly have spoken for hours and have talked about all the things that are done to allow the community consultation. People want CIR. Why? Because they do not feel that they got a fair shake on all these matters that we dealt with for six years, supposedly to give the people some consultation. It is not on. I know that the CIR Bill
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