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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (26 March) . . Page.. 608 ..

MR KAINE: Mr Whitecross, you had your 20 minutes and you did not even use it. As I said, you made not one single contribution to the debate, so do not laugh and titter over there. I can see that your standard of performance has already been signalled to us. I use the word again: Ineffective. I would have thought a group such as this would have come back with some very positive proposals in accordance with the terms of reference. They were to investigate and recommend improvements. They have made no recommendations whatsoever. They have certainly traversed most of the issues that have come up for debate on the question of government since 1988-89 - not all of them, but most of them. But, having raised them and referred to them briefly, they then walked away. Their chapter 6, "How to go about a Change for the Better", merely again traverses the issues. There is not a single recommendation in here.

I do not know what they thought the Chief Minister was going to do with this report when she got it, except maybe jam the door open so that people could come and talk to her about these issues without having to open the door. I was disturbed that even this high-powered group seem to have confused the legislature and the Executive. I quote from page 14, chapter 5, "How would the Elected Representatives Govern?". Under the heading "Involving Assembly Members in a Committee system", it says that there would be a bunch of committees, and then:

These Assembly Committees would consider new policy proposals, business and strategic plans, performance reports (including budgets) and legislative proposals from the agencies within the Minister's portfolio.

In other words, it seems to be envisaged that these committees are not Assembly committees but are subservient to the Ministers. The next statement, I think, shows their real confusion, because they say:

Their function would be advisory, and their role to inform the Executive's decision-making.

Surely these people understand that our committees are creatures of the Assembly, not creatures of the Government, and there is no way that this place, in my view, is going to allow that to change. To assert that these committees ought to be somehow appointed by Ministers and responsible to Ministers and advisory to the Executive is a sheer nonsense. I am not certain that these high-priced people who put this report together even begin to understand the difference between the legislature and the Executive. Have they not read Basic Public Administration and Politics 1? There is no indication in here that they have.

Mr Wood: But some of your people support that council-style approach, which is what that is.

MR KAINE: Mr Wood, there is nothing wrong with a debate about a council-style government. I am not too sure that that has yet been defined, but there is nothing wrong with having a debate about it. However, if you had commissioned a high-priced group of very prominent and eminent people and asked them to examine that subject, and they

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