Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4290 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

its faults, but not take it as a definitive statement from the community on where we should go. We will never have the definitive statement anyway; but, if we have a number of different ways of trying to reach agreement as a community about the direction in which we want to go, then we have a better chance of actually achieving outcomes that are appropriate.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General): I seek leave to make a short statement on this subject, Mr Speaker.

Leave granted.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I will be brief. It is obviously very difficult, in an exercise as large and complex as the National Capital Futures Conference, to please everybody. It is clear from some of the comments made in this debate that that has not occurred; that is, that everybody has not been pleased. That is, as I said, not surprising. But I think it needs to be placed on the record very firmly that an exercise like this, where the Government comes down among the key stakeholders and ordinary citizens in the Territory and attempts to ascertain their views on these matters, is a vitally important part of the process of understanding where the community should be heading.

We have a process of government in the ACT which is centred very much around the operation of this parliament. It is a representational structure of government. People elect us to serve for three years in this place; we make decisions in those three years; and we go back at the end of three years and say, "Did I do a good job, or did I not?". But sometimes other structures are needed to supplement the process of decision-making and reaching consensus about where we should be headed, in a more subtle and sensitive way than is possible through the very blunt instrument of electing party A or party B to be the government of the Territory.

So, Mr Speaker, what happened here was, I think, a very important exercise. Whatever shortcomings it might be said to have, nonetheless it is extremely important. It is extremely easy for those opposite to just sling mud at it in a very determined way. But, again, I think we cannot regard that kind of process as credible unless we know what alternative mechanism they would use to probe the views of citizens of the Territory. If they, in government next year after February's election, were to say, "Our mandate is enough consultation for what we are going to do. We can make these decisions and engineer these changes based on our majority, or based on our numbers, in this place", then clearly, Mr Speaker, we would have a serious problem. I think it is important that governments, whatever their numbers on the floor of the Assembly, whatever their position, whatever the recentness of their mandate, need to be going back to their electorates, to their constituencies, and saying, "What do you think about this? How does this idea fly? Where do we go on this?". And that is what the National Capital Futures Conference did.

I think Mr Berry and his colleagues over there would do well to take a few leaves out of the book of Mr Beazley up on the hill. He has been careful, as a Minister relegated to the opposition benches after a long period in government, to accept that there needs to be a process where you accept some things, you support some things and you oppose others.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .