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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4648 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

A major concern to the Greens is that the ACT, or Australia as a whole, does not have formal legislation to protect the rights of minorities or to protect fundamental social and environmental objectives. The Bill does nothing to address this issue. The Chief Minister is obliged to estimate the financial costs or savings of the proposed law; but there is no obligation to assess the social or environmental impacts.

In conclusion, we are prepared to further examine the issue of CIR as part of a broader process of getting more community participation in government decision-making; but we are certainly not prepared to support legislation until a Bill of Rights is entrenched in the ACT and community right to know legislation and further improved freedom of information legislation are passed. Assembly procedures need to be changed to provide for more involvement by non-Executive members in government decision-making, and extensive community consultation processes need to be better implemented.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (7.20), in reply: Mr Speaker, I cannot say that I am going to win any more votes for this proposal than were won on either of the two previous occasions on which the Government put forward this idea. We are not making any progress in that sense, I must admit. I might say, of course, that we are the first and only government in Australia to have introduced such a Bill. Many oppositions have attempted to do so. Many parties have supported the principle, either presently or in the past, including the Australian Labor Party and - - -

Mr Whitecross: A long time in the past.

MR HUMPHRIES: For a long time, that view was held, too. Mr Speaker, I take comfort from the fact that I have seen in this debate somewhat more open-mindedness by members about the concepts here and more willingness to accept that this idea deserves further exploration. I hope that we will return to it and look at it again in the Fourth Assembly, because I believe that this is an idea which, in 50 years' time, electorates around the world will regard as commonplace. Why do I say that? It is because the world is becoming better educated; people are becoming more articulate and more sophisticated; and they have had access to much better sources of information, of which the Internet is only one.

The view that, in 50 years' time, people will say that they are content to let a representative body of people, chosen by an election once every three or four years, make all the decisions that affect their lives, without a continuous process of participation in that democratic system, I think, would be a view as old hat as saying that we believe that machines will ruin our lives and that cars should not travel at more than 10 miles per hour. I think in that period of time the world will have changed very dramatically, and I would simply like the Australian Capital Territory to be at the forefront of what I consider will be dramatic change in the future. So, I thank members for at least the willingness to consider this issue and the shift towards giving this idea some more airing in the future.

Many of the arguments that I have heard tonight as to why we should not have CIR have been based either on principles, which I would like to challenge in a moment, or on the operation of CIR in other countries. There are many differences between what has been proposed here in the ACT and what actually operates in other countries as far as CIR

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