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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 1 Hansard (30 April) . . Page.. 276 ..

Should such principles apply in the Assembly if the establishment of executive committees as proposed proceeds? If the ruling made by the then Speaker on 13 February 1990, after the appointment of Executive Deputies (see Attachment 5) is followed, any questions without notice to executive chairs would be ruled out of order. Further, if the House of Representatives' practice in relation to parliamentary secretaries is followed, the number of private Members could be dramatically reduced and this would have implications for the time allocated to private Member's business.

Likely Impact on the Role of MLAs who become Chairs or Members of
Executive Committees

Members and their duties

The Assembly's committee system has made a vital contribution to the Assembly's performance of its role. Its standing orders require that the membership of its committees be "composed of representatives of all groups and parties in the Assembly as nearly as practicable proportional to their representation in the Assembly". These "representatives" are representatives of the community chosen by the community and accountable to the community and in their role on committees (or for that matter in the Assembly), whether it be policy making or appraisal or scrutinising expenditure proposals, the public accounts, legislative proposals or government administration, they are performing their roles in an open and transparent manner with certain immunities and powers that enable them to operate effectively.

In carrying out their representative functions, Members do so often in a critical manner, which is perceived on occasion as being too adversarial or over the top, but for the health of the system there is a need for a public questioning and testing of the Government's policies and administration. Should those Members who are not appointed to the Executive accept a dual role, that is, as well as being an Assembly Member they are chair of an executive committee, or a member of such a committee, the dynamics will change. The change may be imperceptible, but whether they be cross bench, opposition or coalition or Government backbenchers, there will be a corruption in the performance of their parliamentary role and, on the issues particular to the executive committees at least, their role as parliamentarians will be diminished.

It could be argued that the proposed role of an executive committee is limited or non specific in nature and problems will not occur. The proposed areas of responsibility are, however, of great importance. From the perspective of responsibility, if the year 2000 problem were to become critical to businesses in the Territory the question arises as to who would bear the responsibility in the Assembly, the responsible Minister or the relevant executive committee chair? From the perspective of encroachment on the Assembly's scrutiny role, a question that must be posed is - what if the Executive decided to establish an executive committee which was chaired by an Assembly member on the draft 1998-99 estimates of expenditure and forward estimates?

Disqualification provisions

There is a real danger that the chairs of the proposed executive committees, should they be Members of the Assembly and accept payment or an allowance for the duties they perform, could disqualify themselves as Members of the Assembly.

Section 14 of the Self-Government Act provides that a Member vacates office if the Member:

(a) at any time after the beginning of the first meeting of the Assembly after a general election,
is not qualified to take a seat as a member; ...

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