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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 4093 ..
MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister): Mr Speaker, I wish to inform members that Mr Kaine will be absent from question time today. Mr Humphries will answer any questions that would normally be directed to Mr Kaine.
Statement by Speaker
MR SPEAKER: Last Thursday, I undertook to report back to the Assembly on the use of standing order 116, after Mr Moore asked Mr Osborne a question without notice. Mr Moore asked Mr Osborne a question about surveillance cameras, on the basis that Mr Osborne was the chair of the Legal Affairs Committee inquiry into surveillance cameras which reported to the Assembly in September 1996. Yesterday, Ms Horodny asked Mr Moore a question which was, in part, related to the inquiry by the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment into the environment protection Bills. The report of that inquiry was presented on 4 November 1997.
Standing order 116 allows members to ask other members questions on matters of which they have charge, within certain parameters. However, I do not believe it permits questions of the nature of those asked in recent days. Once a committee report has been presented to the Assembly the committee chair no longer has charge of the matter; the report is in the hands of the Assembly. Therefore, in future I will rule out of order any question directed to a committee chair of the nature of those asked of Mr Osborne on Thursday and Mr Moore yesterday, unless the Assembly directs otherwise. I remind members that it is always open to the Assembly to review its practices in relation to question time. Any member may put forward a proposition to alter our practices and standing orders.
MR BERRY: My question is to our Chief Minister and Treasurer, the Minister who is responsible for devising the taxes on ACT residents and who yesterday recanted on her blissfully ignorant statement in this Assembly that a GST was a technically progressive tax.
Mrs Carnell: And then I said later that was not the case.
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