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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (10 March) . . Page.. 523 ..

MS CARNELL

Some of the people who are currently involved in our Territory owned corporations certainly have spoken to me and, I assume, to other members of the Assembly, making their point about what this Bill will do. Ms Tucker will not need to listen to this, because she wrote the letter; but I want to just show what I mean about the problem. Recently, I wrote to Ms Tucker's committee, the Standing Committee on Education, with regard to some recommendations of people to go on the Council of the University of Canberra. I also wrote to crossbench members with regard to this. Ms Tucker wrote back to me - on behalf of the committee, I assume, but certainly as chair - in relation to the proposed new part-time members, saying that the committee seeks additional information.

Mr Rugendyke and Mr Osborne, that additional information is interesting. This is reality. This is what is happening now, because it has happened in this situation. Mr Speaker, what Ms Tucker has asked for is for me to provide details of how the community was advised of the vacancies and the process for calling for nominations. Are we going to go to the Canberra Times and say, "Who would like to be on the board of ACTEW"? What a great process that is!

Ms Tucker: That is your suggestion, not mine.

MS CARNELL: Sorry; this is what is happening. This is in your letter.

Ms Tucker: I do not talk about going to the Canberra Times. That is your idea.

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I am just using the letter. It says:

Would you please provide details of how the community was asked of vacancies and the process for calling for nominations.

Mr Speaker, calling for nominations for the board of ACTEW - what a great idea! Boy, could we get some great nominations there! But she does not stop there. She said:

Would you please advise the names of other people who were considered and their qualifications for the positions.

So, Mr Speaker, the people who did not get up are now going to have their names and their qualifications given to an Assembly committee to show why they have failed. This is exactly what the members who got in touch with Mr Rugendyke and Mr Osborne and others - well, Mr Rugendyke - said would happen, is it not? They said that we would end up with Assembly committees wanting to second-guess the nominations; that they would want the names of the people who did not get up to go to the committee.

Mr Speaker and members of the Assembly, if we want good people to put their names forward for multimillion-dollar corporations and if we are going to seek nominations from the community, apart from having to have a whole department to handle the number of people who put their names forward and then having the names of the people who do not get up go to committees, what do we think will happen? I have no problems with sensible committee behaviour; but, in this case, this shows categorically how

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