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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1711 ..

MR KAINE (4.31): Mr Speaker, I would like to try to inject a bit of sense and responsibility into this debate. What we are doing here, in my humble opinion, is establishing a precedent where the oversight of a committee's recommendations is going to become the responsibility of a body outside this Assembly. Are we establishing a precedent? Every time a committee brings down a significant report requiring a program of action to be taken by the Government, are we going to set up a similar body? If not, what is so different about this one? What is so different about this one that it requires this extraordinary action to be taken? This is only to admit that the Assembly is incapable of administering its own business.

Mr Whitecross just gave us a 15-minute harangue. He gave no justification for establishing this committee outside the Assembly that Ms Tucker is recommending. He gave no reason or justification whatsoever for it. He simply took it as an opportunity to kick the Government in the head one more time. I ask Mr Whitecross: Should you by some mischance become Chief Minister, do you want to have an external organisation, of the constitution put forward by Ms Tucker, looking over your shoulder to tell you what you are doing wrong and how you should be doing it better every time a committee brings down a substantive program and it is required to be undertaken? As the potential Chief Minister, Mr Whitecross, you ought to be thinking very carefully about that proposition. I come back to the question: What is it about these recommendations that makes them so different from many other recommendations of many other committees in reports that have been tabled over the last seven years in this place? There is no significant difference at all - none whatsoever.

Ms Tucker is today guilty of a gross set of double standards. I point out that only today she submitted a report of her own committee which imposes a series of actions on the Government, if this report is adopted. What does she say in her report? She says:

... the Committee will continue to monitor developments in relation to the implementation of this report's recommendations ...

So it is good enough for her committee to continue to monitor the implementation of the recommended action, but it is not good enough for the Public Accounts Committee to do it. What a double standard! I would like her to explain how it is that her committee is quite competent, capable and qualified to supervise and oversight the recommendations of her committee, when the Public Accounts Committee is seemingly incompetent and incapable of doing the same function in connection with competition policy. I do not understand how her committee got to be so smart, quite frankly.

Not only do we have a good set of double standards here, but I come back to the point that we are also establishing a precedent that I find quite offensive. I think, Mr Whitecross, that, if you support this, one day you will regret it. If you should by some mischance become Chief Minister of this place, every time you undertake to implement a series of recommendations arising from a committee, you will have an organisation like this hung around your neck like an albatross. Look at the terms of reference that Ms Tucker proposes to give them. Talk about taking in the entire universe! Do you think that is a good thing? If you do, Mr Whitecross, all I can say is that you have not thought it through; maybe you are not capable of thinking it through.

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