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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 1927 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

issues before us. We were presented with a report from ASIO that we were not meeting our legal responsibilities here in terms of security. We had a responsibility, as a committee, to take that seriously. You did not offer any alternative legal advice. You did not say to the Administration and Procedure Committee, "We have a different opinion about this". We did not hear any of that detail at all. I do not know why you think you should be getting so much feedback, when you did not give very much information at all to the committee. We had to make a decision on the evidence that was put before us, and that is exactly what we did.

The other point that you have made today, which I think is very unfair and not the truth - and you were giving this impression - is that it was our choice; that the Administration and Procedure Committee decided to cut security; that we made that decision because we thought it was a good idea. We were told we had to find $300,000 of savings in this place. Were we going to see jobs go in the Secretariat? Were we going to see the processes of democracy cut, through this saving that was imposed on us? We made a hard decision, which was about security. This is another case of the Government saying, "You make the decision; you are the manager; it is your responsibility". We did not make the decision to take $300,000 out of our budget. We had to work with that decision, which was your decision. We made that decision to cut security, because it was the least painful in terms of how this Assembly works. We did not want to take jobs out of the Secretariat.

Once again, I am afraid the version that you are putting is totally inaccurate. I want to say again, quite clearly, that I refute it. I think the Administration and Procedure Committee worked very hard in trying to find solutions. We have been open to comment about how to change it. There have been changes made quite recently to try to make it accommodate actually what members of this place and their staff want. We showed flexibility and interest in that, but we did not get it from you people over there when we asked for it. If you want to show me letters you wrote, which we did not get, giving a detailed response, then I would like to see them; but we did not receive any.

With regard to the Prasad report: There was consultation on that. We certainly spoke at length with Mr Prasad about how we worked. We had quite a few difficulties with what he came out with, obviously. There were some quite farcical elements of it, which we have already discussed in this place, such as that it was determined that we would have a leader of the Greens, and even whom it should be. That was me, because I spoke first here. I think I asked the Speaker did I need to seek leave. I think that is what I said. That is a good reason to choose a leader. There were parts of this report that were a total farce. We were also given a lot of brownie points because we pooled resources; but we were penalised for that, with a significant cut to our staff allocation. Of course, we have difficulties with it. We had alternative proposals, which we have put to the Government on many occasions in writing, and we have some feedback. But the feedback has basically been, "Sorry; I do not agree at all". Okay, that is your choice; but I would still argue that our proposals dealing with the issue of staff allocation should have been given much more serious attention, because I believe it is an issue. It is an ongoing issue, and I am sure we will have more debates on that.

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