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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 4 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 934 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

The thousands of people who are affected by this want to keep their Milk Authority and they want a government that will defend it. That is why the motion and the amendments have been put forward.

Mr Speaker, there is no reason at all to accept the challenge that Mr Humphries has put forward, because it is meaningless. Their performance on these issues in the past is just not good enough. There needs to be an independent body. It is no good the Government trying to create the impression that we have some lack of faith in public servants. As has already been said, it is unfair to lay this responsibility on public servants. The assessment needed here not only has to be an independent assessment, but also has to be seen to be an independent one; and public servants cannot fill that measure.

Mr Speaker, the motion and the amendments will be supported by Labor. I see that the Chief Minister is proposing to move an amendment to have this matter handed back to her. It will seek to add the following new paragraph:

(4) requires the Chief Minister to report to the Assembly by the last sitting day in August 1998 with a proposed model for such a council including a defined role, accountability arrangements and resource issues.

Why would we hand over the authority to the Chief Minister, given her performance thus far in relation to competition issues? You would have to be crazy. There is not a chance in the world, in my book. Anybody that is sucked into that has not learnt much from the Government's performance to this point. We will not be sucked into it at all. We will not be supporting the Chief Minister's move to hand herself the authority to deal with this issue along the way. Mr Speaker, the motion and the amendments that have already been moved should be supported. We will wait for further debate in relation to the amendment which has been foreshadowed by Mrs Carnell but is yet to be moved.

Amendment (Mr Hargreaves's) agreed to.

MS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (5.56): Mr Speaker, I move:

After proposed paragraph (3) add the following new paragraph:

"(4) requires the Chief Minister to report to the Assembly by the last sitting day in August 1998 with a proposed model for such a council including a defined role, accountability arrangements and resource issues.".

Mr Speaker, again, I make the point that there is a need for a model for this council. I think Ms Tucker made the point that, at this stage, they had not determined what the model would look like. There also need to be a defined role, accountability arrangements, and, just as importantly, resourcing issues. Mr Speaker, although Assembly committees have much power and capacity, they do not have the capacity to resource anything.

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