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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 1 Hansard (29 April) . . Page.. 195 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

It goes to those issues as well. Some people like to see whether they are getting value for money. They do not want to book seats to come every Tuesday, but they certainly want to have the opportunity. The principle is the important bit that I think members ought to consider as well. It is an important principle that the Assembly throws its doors open at a time suitable to its constituents. Rejection of this motion - and I suspect it will be rejected - will demonstrate to the community that you do not want them here outside working hours and you are not prepared to put in the extra effort to demonstrate to them that they are worthy of special consideration.

That will be the arrogant response to this proposal if you reject it. We have all sat here on other nights when there have not been many people in the gallery, save for public servants and advisers; but those were not programmed nights and they were not regular nights. That is an extremely important feature of what is being proposed here. If my amendment succeeds, it will be every Tuesday night. Everybody in the ACT will know that if they come here on a Tuesday night they will be able to see something happening.

Mrs Carnell laughs about some of the things that have been discussed here and how people may not be interested in them. You might be surprised at the level of interest in these issues. Not only is this a sensible thing to do in terms of accessibility to this place but also it sends a message to the community that you really care about giving them the opportunity. I say to you that if you reject this you will tell them, "We do not care. Do not come here. We do not want you here. We do not want you watching us. We do not want you to see us burning up your taxpayers' dollars. We do not want you to come here and watch us try to demonstrate that we are worth anything". That is the message you are sending to them, and that is what I will be telling them if you reject it - make no mistake about that. Yes, not many people come here and some might even say it is not worth having because of the expenditure; but those same people would say, "I would rather close the whole place down, not just close it down on Tuesday nights".

The fact of the matter is that there is an opportunity here which has been used in the past successfully - painfully for the participants in the debates, I must admit - and I am prepared, and my colleagues in the Labor Party are prepared, to put the effort in. What we are asking the rest of you to do is to put the effort in as well. I repeat: There has been much said about the extra trappings, wages and working conditions that are going to MLAs but not much about anything extra that we are doing for the community. Last time when this came around Mrs Carnell, I think, agreed in some sort of way to the Tuesday night sittings but appeared to have been overridden by her party room, as I recall, because they did not seem that keen on the idea.

I do not think being keen on the idea is a criterion that you ought to be using. This is about providing a bit better access to the community and just putting off for the few Tuesdays in every year that we sit the opportunity to go home and do something social or perhaps do something in the community that many of us do after hours. After-hours work is not something new to politicians, so it should not be something new in this place. It should be a matter of course so that people can stroll in here, watch Assembly proceedings, as they might wish to, for as long as they like, and then stroll out. Again, I do not expect a roll-up for these sorts of things, but I would expect that the principle would be welcomed.

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