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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2364 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

We believe it is appropriate that the Assembly has some input. So, yes, you have my undertaking that we will seek expressions of interest from all of the various interest groups and from the general community as well. We will decide on four people who we believe represent the community as a whole, and then the Assembly will be able to determine whether they believe our approach was appropriate.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (6.44): Mr Speaker, I want to add briefly to the comments made by Mrs Carnell. Mr Moore suggests that there is no obligation to appoint a member of the TLC or a nominee of the TLC, but one should be appointed after consultation with the TLC. I realise that that is what the words effectively say, but I put it to members that if the Government consults with the TLC and the TLC says, "We believe that person X should be appointed to the board", and for some reason the Government views that as being an unhelpful appointment, clearly the Government is going to wear some stick in this place on - - -

Mr Berry: Yes.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Berry says, "Yes". It will wear some stick on the basis that it has refused to accept the nominee. I hope that Mr Moore is listening to this because it is directed to the point.

Mr Moore: I am, yes.

MR HUMPHRIES: I just said that, effectively, if the TLC says, "We think you should appoint this person", and the Government takes the view that that person is not helpful in the context of the board, we will wear some stick in this place, and probably a disallowance motion. Mr Berry says, "Yes". This is about the TLC effectively nominating someone to the board. That is what it is about.

Mr Berry: You are going to have to prove your case.

MR HUMPHRIES: Exactly. It is going to be about allowing the TLC to nominate somebody to the board. If you have a board which is representative of interest groups then, yes, I would say you need to have a TLC representative on it. Absolutely. I certainly would not argue with that. This Government, Mr Speaker, has not attempted to appoint boards of that nature without a representative of the labour movement in every case. Let anyone else in this place point to an example of where we have tried to appoint a representative board without having such a person on the board. There has always been someone representative of the work force in an organisation, or of the labour movement as such, the Trades and Labour Council or whatever. But we are not trying to appoint that kind of board in this case. We are trying to appoint a board consisting of people with a background that is appropriate for the board itself.

Mr Berry argued a moment ago that the board is expensive; that you have to service these people; that we have to pay them sitting fees and so on. Now he wants to appoint more - - -

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