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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 172 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

That relates to the amount of time that the Minister for Health would have to provide the information that is available. While the debate was on the Chief Minister said to me, "Why do we want quarterly activity reports when we have monthly activity reports?". Indeed, that seemed to me to be a quite sensible notion. I said, "I suppose you can add up the three monthly reports and get the quarterly report". That seemed to be a reasonable way to go about it. Running the two did not seem to be appropriate. However, Mr Berry suggested to me that that is not the case; there is different information in the quarterly reports. If there is different information, then it would seem to me that would be a good reason to retain the motion as it is. However, Mr Speaker, if I can be persuaded that the quarterly activity reports are just the combination of the three monthly reports, then it does not matter. There is the issue, of course, that if there are three monthly reports it probably is very easy to put the quarterly report together anyway.

Mr Osborne: It is the old times three table.

MR MOORE: Times three; thank you, Mr Osborne; that is the one. It seems to me that 30 days is a reasonable time for the preparation of those. I think it would still put a bit of pressure on the department to get those reports done in that time, but it is reasonable. I can accept that 15 days is probably very tight. Mr Speaker, in general, I will be supporting the motion, but I still need to be persuaded that we do need these quarterly activity reports.

MR SPEAKER: The question is: That Mr Moore's amendment be agreed to.

Mr Humphries: I thought we were doing - - -

MR SPEAKER: We are now out of order. When you move your amendment, Mr Humphries, you will need leave; but you will get leave anyway. It is a procedural matter. Yours should come before Mr Moore's, but it is not the end of the world if we do it the other way round.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (6.30): Then I am speaking to Mr Moore's amendment. I simply indicate we would support it. The Assembly can require almost anything, and it is probably also true that the Assembly will probably receive almost anything that it requires. It could ask for a report to be available within seven days if it wanted to. But at the end of the day, if the Assembly imposes too short a period to be realistically able to get the information together, what will happen, very simply, is that there will be a compromise on quality; and either we will simply produce something too quickly to be assured of its accuracy or it will be issued with a disclaimer that it may not be accurate. Of course, then members of the Assembly are no better informed than they were before.

MR BERRY: (6.31): I will be supporting Mr Moore's amendment.

MR SPEAKER: You are speaking to his amendment at this point, are you?

MR BERRY: I was hoping to close the debate, really.

MR SPEAKER: There is another amendment to be moved.

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