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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 97 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

The first two paragraphs of my motion intentionally state the obvious, but I have included them to remind the Government that they are not the only ones here in this Assembly - a fact which often seems to be forgotten, especially in the matter I am raising. They are, I remind them, a minority government, as has been the case in previous Assemblies. Under our Hare-Clark voting system there is a reasonable expectation of this also being the case in future Assemblies. Last year non-Government members fought for and won a change to standing orders to set aside a whole day every sitting week for private members business instead of the usual two hours a week. This was an increase from just 12 per cent of available sitting time to one-third. We do not seem to have any problem in filling this extra time with legislation and ideas for debate. This Assembly is very different from other parliaments in Australia. However, we all need to accept that and get on with trying to make things work to the benefit of the people of Canberra, whom we are here to serve.

Mr Speaker, the third paragraph of the motion refers to the current level of resources available to the Parliamentary Counsel's Office and consequently the level of service they can offer members of this Assembly. My office was informed in mid-January by the acting head of the Parliamentary Counsel's Office that they were operating with 20 per cent less resources than normal and that two senior drafting staff were about to leave the office. On top of this, he estimated that their current number of available drafting staff would be unable to complete even the Government's category one Bills this year and that, as a result, I could expect none of the Bills for which I had already issued drafting instructions, or the new Bills I currently have in the pipeline, to be worked on, or ready for presentation at any stage during this year, which is effectively the rest of the life of this Assembly. This affects not only me, but also other non-Government members who have similar problems. Quite clearly, this is not good enough. What is the point of any of us being here if we cannot have legislation drafted? The Government now has virtually exclusive access to all legislative drafting, with non-Government members either having to pay personally for solicitors to draft their Bills, which I am sure none of us wish to do, or having to resort to drafting their own.

I have three Bills at the Parliamentary Counsel's Office in various stages of completion, one of which is a series of radical amendments to the Freedom of Information Act that my office and the Parliamentary Counsel's Office have been working on for 15 months already. At the start of last year I employed someone to work solely on this issue, because at the time I was informed by the Parliamentary Counsel that it was a big job and he may well not be able to fit it in. In September or October of last year we sent the amended Bill over to the Parliamentary Counsel's Office. It had been changed line by line in line with what we wanted to achieve. There was some hope that we would get it completed by the end of last year, but that was not the case. We were told in the Christmas break that we would definitely have it by this week; but, as I said earlier, we have now been told that we will not have it. We do not have it this week, and we will not have it at all - a situation that is not good enough. I accept that it is a complicated piece of legislation, but it is not acceptable that this Bill cannot be drafted within the life of this Assembly.

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