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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (26 March) . . Page.. 609 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

came back and said nothing but "a consideration of a council-style of government is a good thing" - and that is what they would have done if they had been given those terms of reference, in view of the way that they have dealt with this subject - it would have added nothing to the debate.

A lot of these issues, as I have said, have been on the agenda since 1988-89 - for example, the role of this Government in the region. That got a bit of a head start when I was Chief Minister because I thought it was very important. I believed then, and I believe now, that you do not have to change the boundaries of the ACT for the ACT Government to be influential and to be involved in what goes on in a much wider piece of territory than that. There has been some debate recently about extending the borders. You do not have to do that. You do not have to get into a fight with New South Wales about annexing territory from New South Wales to influence and be involved in the decisions affecting the lives of people out there. They are already strongly influenced because they use the ACT for education, for health, as their financial centre - in many ways. So we do not need to extend our political hegemony out into that region in order to influence it and determine the course. Having said that, one of their terms of reference was to examine the ACT's role as a regional government. I would have liked to read in here somewhere where they in fact did anything with that term of reference. Where did they come back to the Chief Minister with any recommendation about what she should now do, as opposed to what we have been doing for the last seven years, virtually, in this matter?

There is room for ongoing debate on many aspects of government. What should the Government be doing? What sort of Public Service does it need to implement its policies and deliver the services? How should they be organised? What should be the relationship between that organisation and this Assembly? What is the role of committees of the Assembly? There are dozens and dozens of topics, all of which could benefit from some legitimate and informed debate. The Chief Minister, I believe, had good intentions when she commissioned this report. I think she must have been extremely disappointed when she got such a slender document, the centrepiece of which seems to be an organisation chart on page 13 that, apart from the juxtaposition of committees to agencies, does not change anything that exists now. It makes no contribution to the debate as to how the system would work, other than this seemingly erroneous impression that the committees ought to be subservient to the Cabinet in some fashion. Not while I have anything to do with the way in which government does its business, I have to say quite strongly.

Mr Speaker, if the Opposition really wished to make an input to the debate of a rational kind and of a productive kind, I would like to hear them do it; but more of the 10 minutes that we had from the new Leader of the Opposition, with no input of any constructive worth at all, will not do it. If they do not take the opportunity to add something productive to this debate, they are forever condemned as a bunch of whingers who only want to sit there and complain. They do not want to make any useful contribution.

MS TUCKER (11.26): Mr Speaker, this is an important debate, as these issues about how a government functions are central to the functioning of democracy. Parliaments are the central authority of representative government; but how to make them more representative, responsive and inclusive is indeed a challenge. As others have mentioned, over the past 12 months we have heard a lot about Mrs Carnell's promise of open and consultative government, open budget processes and council-style government,

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