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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4286 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

considered by government. But it was certainly not a process that politicians in this place ought to have been too closely involved in, and I said that at the conference when I spoke. I was critical of aspects of the conference because I felt that those criticisms needed to be made.

I certainly think that politicians should not have been anywhere near it, because politicians are elected by the people of the ACT, and the government makes decisions in this place on their behalf. It seemed to be a conflict of interest for one to be participating in a quasi policy-making consultative body and then getting a chance to make decisions on those policies in this house. Once you have been involved in the decision-making process, you have committed yourself to decide upon a certain course and then find yourself in the parliament making decisions in respect of it. When it comes to a particular matter, it would be a rare event for politicians to walk away from decisions they had wedded themselves to in the legislative process.

So, in summary, Mr Speaker, I think it is best to describe this whole process from beginning to end - the promise to have a council-style government and the way this whole election campaign has been run - as a very expensive exercise which has been sponsored by the Territory's taxpayers. I have yet to see anything useful that will come out of it for the governance of the ACT.

I note that in the conference an announcement was made about an inquiry into the ACT Government. I note further that there have been a few exceptions to that. It was a broad-ranging inquiry, which was done without consultation with anybody in the early stages. It is typical of this Government: "We promise to consult after we have made the decision". They made the decision to have this conference so that they could distance themselves from the model in the ACT. It is a very cynical approach to the body politic in the ACT that the Chief Minister should distance herself from it by way of these sorts of mechanisms. This inquiry was to create the impression that there was something wrong with the model in the ACT and it was not the Chief Minister's fault; but she was fixing it.

The fact of the matter is that the way that it has been approached will not fix it either, because it has been a very cynical agreement between the Chief Minister and the relevant Minister on the hill. There was no consultation with the parties. If there was consultation with the parties, it was only with some of them in the lead-up to this conference. The inquiry has had a head appointed. I have relentlessly bagged the process, because I think it was a nonsense, and any decisions - - -

Mr Humphries: Because you always do, Mr Berry.

MR BERRY: No; because the decision to have the inquiry should have been made in here by elected politicians. If you and those people who support this inquiry into the ACT were fair dinkum, you would have an inquiry into everything, including the electoral system. But nobody wants to see that happen, because you are a bit worried about it. It has been wiped out of the process.

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