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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 9 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 2736 ..

Mr Moore: Because we adopted the House of Representatives practice, where there have been majority governments, by and large, forever.

MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed. Absolutely. That is the inheritance. This is not like the House of Representatives, and I accept that. I would also have to argue that we are not exactly a chamber in which the responsibilities, in a sense, are upon every member equally. There is a special responsibility on the Executive and I support the retention of some of those safeguards or privileges, or whatever you want to call them, in the standing orders to give the Executive some capacity to focus on its agenda.

Mr Speaker, I am reluctant to move away from this arrangement. When we were in opposition, for much of the last four or five years, we did not support changes of this kind to the standing orders. We obviously would benefit from these arrangements the next time we happen to be in opposition, but we still believe that it is appropriate for the government to be given some window of opportunity, as it were, to have the capacity to bring forward its program, and the more that non-government business or private members business is extended the less, obviously, that window will be.

Comment was made by Ms Tucker about the amount of business on the notice paper and so on. I certainly do not accept that the Government has not been producing very much work or is lazy in some way, which, I think, might have been the implication of Ms Tucker's comments. I have not done an examination, but I think you will find that in the first 18 months of this Government's life we produced about as much legislation as any other government has in its first 18 months. At least that is my expectation.

Mr De Domenico: Not that that is a good indication.

MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed, as Mr De Domenico objects, that is not necessarily a good indicator of achievement or a fulfilling existence. There are a number of reasons why there is that imbalance that Ms Tucker identified. One reason is that this Government has made a very deliberate decision that we do not see the volume of legislation as being the indicator of our success as a government. We will try to minimise the amount of legislation we bring forward. We have made a conscious decision, as members will see by looking at the spring legislative program which the Chief Minister tabled yesterday, to try to minimise the number of pieces of legislation we bring to this place. For example, rather than having Crimes (Amendment) Bill No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 throughout the year, we try to compress them into one single piece of legislation so that we can deal with all the issues at the one time. Whether other members think that is a good idea or not I do not really have a view about, but I think that is a deliberate policy by the Government and we recognise that it reduces the amount of legislation we bring into this place.

We also are very keen to reduce the total amount of legislation which impacts on the lives of our citizens. We operate under the legal fiction that ignorance of the law is no excuse; yet we sit here day after day churning it out, perhaps little aware at the time that this makes it harder and harder for that legal myth to be met. There are more and more laws on the statute books and people have to understand what those laws are in particular

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