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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (10 March) . . Page.. 531 ..

MR QUINLAN

(4.01): As I indicated earlier, Mr Speaker, this is a dopey amendment. To inform us after the event means absolutely nothing, and you have to ask yourself, having been informed that a particular individual has been appointed, if you want to object, how you do that. You can do it only by raising the stakes and, in fact, creating that situation which, you state, people like Mr Service are concerned about - having their names mentioned or having their qualifications questioned.

What this legislation does, unamended, is allow a review process by the committee. It allows questions to be raised and resolved without doing that in the public forum. The amendment paints non-government members of this Assembly into a corner should the day come when they genuinely, seriously object to the appointment of a given individual to a given Territory owned corporation. In the short time that I have been in this place, many board appointments have been made, with no real fuss. I anticipate that, in the main, that situation would continue. However, if, as some of us fear, we might be edging towards ACT Inc., then I think there needs to be in place a reasonable review process.

All this does is ask for the potential appointments to be referred and for the comments of the committee involved to be taken into account. This does not have to become a matter of public airing, public debate or public angst. It just means that we have a process that will work. If you have an objection to the legislation, I think your amendment makes the situation that you object to, in relation to the original legislative change, worse rather than better. So, obviously, we do not support the amendment.

Question put:

That the amendment (Ms Carnell's ) be agreed to.

The Assembly voted - 

AYES, 6   		NOES, 9

Ms Carnell  		Mr Berry
Mr Cornwell  		Mr Corbell
Mr Hird  		Mr Hargreaves
Mr Humphries  		Mr Kaine
Mr Smyth  		Mr Osborne
Mr Stefaniak  		Mr Quinlan
 			Mr Rugendyke
 			Mr Stanhope
 			Ms Tucker
Question so resolved in the negative.

Bill, as a whole, agreed to.

Bill agreed to.

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