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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1853 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

My experience is that those things take a long time to reach agreement on. The negotiation goes on generally at officer level. Occasionally, issues surface for Ministers to deal with, but generally they go on at officer level. Governments get involved in setting directions on occasions; but, for the most part, they proceed at the subterranean level of officials working through issues and getting to a point of agreement. Those negotiations are generally conducted with an eye to the confidentiality of the negotiations. It would generally not be in accordance with the spirit of those negotiations for members to publicly disclose them or disclose them to a large number of organisations or individuals in a particular context such as, particularly, members of other parties in parliament. I am certain that I would have some explaining to do if I went back to a ministerial council on a sensitive piece of negotiating and said, "I have consulted other parties in the ACT Legislative Assembly, and they think this ...". I do not know that I would get a very good reception.

Mr Moore: Then take the risk.

MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed. The point I am making to Mr Moore is that we are in the position that we almost always have to take that risk. We are acutely aware of that.

Mr Moore: I am prepared to move amendments to such legislation.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Moore, no-one is detracting from your right to do that. I am simply explaining to you our position as governments that go to those meetings. I have already indicated that I think the situation is unsatisfactory.

As members will be aware, I proposed to the national forum of standing committees on the scrutiny of bills in 1994 that they should take up with Attorneys-General the position of Scrutiny of Bills Committees throughout the country, to factor them in at an early stage of these ministerial agreements, so that, when agreements were reached, at least members of those committees had seen the proposals and knew what the uniform legislation looked like before it hit the chambers of various parliaments throughout the county. As my role translated into Attorney-General subsequently, last year - I think it was last year - I took that same proposal to Attorneys-General, wearing a hat as Attorney-General on that occasion. As members will know, because I have reported on this to the Assembly before, Attorneys-General were not interested in that concept.

I am acutely aware of this problem, and I am very anxious for us to find a way around it. Perhaps governments in the ACT and in other places will have to find other ways of dealing with this problem. The day will come when we will reach agreement at the national level and we will come back to this chamber and say, "Here is our agreement. Ratify it", and the Assembly will say no. All we can do is rely on our judgment as Ministers that what we agree to at these council meetings will be acceptable to members of the ACT Assembly, or at least a majority of them. I would simply say that I am aware of what Mr Moore is saying. I am not confident that we always have the right answer. I think it is an issue on which we have to work towards finding better solutions. My view is that the best way of finding those solutions is to have a different process of discussion at the national level, but that is a matter on which there is not agreement at the national level.

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