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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4656 ..

Ms McRae: Ha! I wonder why.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I am interested that those opposite laugh. From my perspective, this shows a party that has matured a lot and whose members are working very well together. I think that shows in terms of our performance generally.

I believe really strongly, as I know Mr Humphries does, that the party solidarity approach that the two-party system has required, probably since inception, is one of the reasons why the two parties are held in such low esteem. It is the view of the Liberal Party in this Assembly that if, by chance, we are elected to the next Assembly - even if we are in opposition - our approach will be to move away from party solidarity on things that are not budget issues. An awful lot of the things that we do are not based upon our respective philosophies. There are a lot of things that people can, and should, have their own views on. Maybe noise from motor sport is one of them. I think it is good to have a party that has proper debate and has people with different views who are willing to debate those views.

Mr Moore: Especially under Hare-Clark.

MRS CARNELL: I think that is the basis of democracy and the basis of Hare-Clark. I am really proud of that. On the issue of the flags and on the issue of surrogacy, Mr Speaker, you would know that there was no requirement for any member of the party to vote in any particular way. I hope we can work on that base - we have done it before - and go from strength to strength as a result.

Mr Speaker, there is one final thing. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry today sent me a brochure and said they were confident that some members opposite might be interested in attending this particular seminar. They put a little note on it from the chamber and said, "After the release of `Working Capital' there could be some people in the Assembly that may need to attend this". I might table that for those people.

MS McRAE (7.45): On a completely different topic, I have had several comments made to me about problems that have resulted, but not of Mr Humphries's making, as a result of the implementation of the Land Act amendment Bill, I think, in June, when differences between the explanatory memorandum and the Bill arose. The Bill talks about rights of people to appeal, while the explanatory memorandum talks about interest and related appeals. I have not been paying much attention to it since then, but it has turned out that it is causing problems. Unlike what I believe to be the convention, the explanatory memorandum is not being used to guide the decisions that are being made.

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