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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4914 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

In accordance with the Labor amendment, let us look at the review in the next Assembly. Let us give it a serious base. Let us take it on from there, as we all would agree, to improve and refine, as far as we can, the operations of the Assembly. That will not be achieved if it is a stunt, as this is.

MR MOORE (11.28): Mr Speaker, I can understand why Labor would say that this is a stunt. After the response that they gave to Professor Pettit, they really have no other choice. They really feel cornered, as indeed, I suppose, Professor Pettit also feels cornered. It is interesting to me, Mr Speaker, that for years - from the very time that Mr Wood talks about, when people opposed to self-government were elected to this Assembly - I have heard people bagging the Assembly. I have observed people stand up here and say, "I am not a politician". It was a favourite saying of Dennis Stevenson. Of course, the irony, as all of us observed, was that he operated as the archetypal politician much more than anybody else did. Yet he would still constantly argue that, for whatever reason, he was not a politician.

Additional to that, I observed many times people bickering over things that do not matter. That bickering over things that are not important, as opposed to discussion and differences of opinion, has increased with the election of Wayne Berry as Leader of the Opposition. His goal has been much more to find ways to oppose things than to look at matters, see where there is agreement, see where compromises can be made and then work out where we have differences so that those differences can become part of a debate in this place and in the community. There is a difference in emphasis.

Through all that, I have sat back and watched people from the public and some people from this Assembly bagging the Assembly and saying that it is a mess; it is not working; and so on. It is an easy thing to say. It gets reported again and again, and it gets reported widely. The constructive things that are done in this Assembly and how well the Assembly works are reported. Certainly, when I raised this issue on ABC radio, people leapt to the defence and said, "Yes, we reported it". To be fair, in the particular instance that I did raise it, ABC radio had run an issue fairly widely; but that was about it. It had been reported; but, as we all know, there is a big difference between a bagging of the Assembly being reported on page 1 and an achievement of this Assembly in working together in a cooperative way being reported on page 6, in the left-hand corner down at the bottom.

We all know the difference. Indeed, we also know that our colleagues in the media are aware of that. When you actually speak to people who have worked in this Assembly as observers and have been elsewhere or to people who have looked at other parliaments, invariably they recognise that this Assembly works extremely well. One of the most significant examples of that, I think, is Matthew Abraham. He had worked in South Australia and in the Federal Parliament. He monitored this Assembly for some years, and then went back to South Australia and reported on the South Australian Parliament. He was very open in observing how well the Second Assembly was working.

Since that time, there have been more improvements. We have strengthened our committee system. Through a motion originally put by Terry Connolly, we have the power to disallow subordinate laws. It is a very rare thing. My legislation amended that to allow us to not only disallow but amend. We have the Statutory Appointments Act.

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