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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 99 ..

MR OSBORNE: Mr Speaker, the Attorney-General's plan to build up staff numbers - - -

Mr Humphries: We will kidnap people from the Commonwealth office and hold them in a cell!

MR OSBORNE: Perhaps the Commonwealth office could take care of the Norfolk Island legislation. They are perhaps adequately resourced.

Mr Humphries: They have done some work for payment in the past. They do not do much of it at the moment.

MR OSBORNE: If they do it for payment, they do not do ours. That is the whole point of this motion.

Mr Humphries: Very marginal.

MR SPEAKER: Mr Osborne, this is not a dialogue. You are addressing all your colleagues in the Assembly.

MR OSBORNE: I appreciate, Mr Speaker, that Mr Humphries is embarrassed by the Labor Party bringing up the trading hours legislation again. He is a little thin-skinned at the moment. Mr Humphries's plan to build up staff numbers by the middle of the year is unacceptable because of the obvious lack of time left in the year and the life of this Assembly to get Bills drafted while the Government still has priority over drafting resources. It is a highly undesirable situation.

I am sure that other members have suggestions for Mr Humphries about how he can effectively deal with this mess. My initial suggestion for him is that, as well as doing some urgent recruiting, he ought to arrange and pay for the current backlog to be contracted out to the private sector. I am not sure what the costs would be, but I know that a precedent has been set in the short history of self-government in the ACT. I believe that in the First Assembly the then Speaker set the precedent and had some legislation drafted. Mr Moore might clarify the situation. I think that would be a quick fix to clear the backlog of legislation that has been sitting there for a long time. Perhaps you, Mr Speaker, and also Mr Humphries will consider that.

In the meantime, I am left with a bad feeling that I will be drafting my own Bills from now on. I will try to have at least one ready for next week. I have spent some time considering whether the current deteriorated state of the Parliamentary Counsel's Office has been caused through negligence by the Government or by a deliberate cynical act to keep non-Government members under some sort of control. So far I have given the Government the benefit of the doubt and accepted that they have just been negligent. On this very serious matter, I am looking for them to come up with a workable plan. Perhaps they should seriously reconsider whether or not we contract out to the private sector until the backlog is fixed up and then continue with Mr Humphries's plan to recruit. I am not happy that I have no Bills to introduce this week. I imagine that other members will echo my thoughts.

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