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(8) The Speaker must receive the written nominations of Members by 5.00 pm, Friday, 10 March 1995, and that those Members so nominated be declared by the Speaker to be appointed as Members of the respective Committees.

(9) On the next meeting of the Assembly after 10 March 1995, the Speaker will inform the Assembly as to those Members so declared to be appointed Members of the respective Committees.

(10) The foregoing provisions, so far as they are inconsistent with the standing orders, have effect notwithstanding anything contained in the standing orders.

Mr Speaker, I believe that this is the more fundamental question that Mr Berry was referring to. The motion is to establish the membership of committees. It identifies by name the two Independents in this chamber - me and Mr Osborne - on some of the committees and it identifies for some other committees the ACT Greens. Otherwise, it has been prepared so as to identify “Government” or “Opposition”, so that, whoever was going to get into government or whoever was going to get into opposition, the result would be the same.

The reality is, Mr Speaker, that it is consistent with standing orders. Mr Berry, with his legal background, will read very carefully from standing order 221:

Membership of committees shall be composed of representatives of all groups and parties in the Assembly as nearly as practicable proportional to their representation in the Assembly.

Mr Berry, being the very effective bush lawyer that he is, knows that the law is interpreted by precedent. Of course, the precedent here, which was set by Labor arrangement - not by manipulation or by Machiavellian conduct - has been to ensure that the committees of the Assembly reflect the make-up of the Assembly. They reflect the fact that the Assembly is made up of a government, an opposition and crossbenchers, with a minority government situation. Indeed, that is how the committees are constructed, and I think that is a fair interpretation of that standing order established upon precedent.

There is an exception to that, Mr Speaker. The motion states that the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment should be composed of Mr Moore, one member from the Government, one member from the Opposition and one member from the ACT Greens. The reason for that, which was agreed in our round table discussions, was that it was quite clear that in this situation there were a number of stakeholders who had a specific interest in planning and environmental issues and who, we believed, could make a fair contribution to a positive outcome for Canberra. That is how this was put together, Mr Speaker.

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