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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 10 Hansard (14 October) . . Page.. 3189 ..
Mr Hird: Mr Osborne probably would be.
MR STANHOPE: Mr Cornwell is, too. When we table the minutes you will actually see that. The committee has, on a consensus basis, developed a work program and it is as I have explained, as has been set out, and I commend this motion to the Assembly.
MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (5.05): Mr Deputy Speaker, I have to say - - -
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Alteration to the reporting date!
MR HUMPHRIES: That is right, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am unconvinced by what Mr Stanhope has said and I propose that the Assembly should reject this motion. Mr Stanhope rose and described in detail what the committee proposes to do. In fact, he gave us a longer speech on that subject than he gave on 6 May when he moved the motion to establish this select committee. He said more today about what he was going to do than he said on 6 May. Mind you, the subject matter was much the same. I quote that speech:
The Labor Party is proposing that a select committee look at the very important issues of contracting and procurement because of the broad focus that any such inquiry would have.
Again I quote:
This is a major and very important issue that requires a whole-of-government approach and it is the view of the ALP that a select committee would be the most appropriate way of achieving that direct, all-of-government focus on contracting and procurement.
Mr Stanhope described in detail a few moments ago the work that the committee is going to do. It is going to interview these people and those people and he had a long list of the people he is going to interview. The question I want to pose today in this debate is: Why has he not interviewed them already? Why, in the last 51/2 months that this select committee has been in existence, that Mr Stanhope has been pulling the pay of a chairman of a committee in this place, has he not been doing these sorts of interviews and doing that kind of work? I raised some concerns in the debate on the previous motion about work that was not being done on a committee. That was a standing committee of the Assembly. The chairman of the committee was not pulling in any extra pay by virtue of the fact that he had this extra inquiry which the committee was not actually doing anything about. That is fair enough.
Mr Moore: And he was doing a range of other things.
MR HUMPHRIES: He was doing a range of other things; that is fair enough.
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