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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (2 March) . . Page.. 497 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Other people I have spoken to in the community, business people, in fact, also think that there would be relevance to the deal in terms of price, because if you have a regulatory regime which has particular standards there is obviously going to be an impact on how that business will operate. If you have a very high requirement regarding standards, how people are qualified, environmental standards or whatever, I would have thought AGL would be very interested in understanding the detail of that themselves. For that reason I do not think it is appropriate to vote on the facilitative Bill until this detail is worked out, but we will have that debate later.

The other argument that has come up is that a select committee requires more resources. The reason I was prepared to support an amendment to my motion was because I understood that both Mr Rugendyke and Mr Corbell were of the view that the workload of the Urban Services Committee was such that it would be better to move it across to a select committee. Mr Hird says, "Well, why would it be any different at all because it would be the same three members?". But there would have been a different chair. Now, that has work implications. I do not know how every member works in this place, but I know, as a chair of committees, that Mr Hird, as chair of the Urban Services Committee, has a very large workload. As chair, he has very particular and onerous responsibilities, greater than those of people who are just members of a committee.

Obviously, that is an individual choice that individual members make when they work on a committee. I am not saying that some people on a committee who are not the chair do not do a lot of work because I know they do. In fact, I know that Mr Corbell does a lot of work on the Urban Services Committee, but the point is that, as chair, I know there is an absolute responsibility to do that work. So, while you would have the same three people, there would be a different chair, which would take some of the load off Mr Hird because he does have a significant responsibility as chair of Urban Services, and Mr Corbell is not chair of any other committees. So I would have thought that was reasonable.

The other issue, of course, is about resources. Mr Hird said that it would take more resources if you had a select committee. I would have thought, and I agree with Mr Kaine here, that this is an urgent matter. This is a matter that requires attention. It may well be said that many of the other items on the schedule of the Urban Services Committee are urgent as well. If you have a select committee you can get extra resources in the secretariat to support the work of that committee. You can therefore see attention being given to this very critical issue for the ACT, so I am supporting Mr Kaine's argument there.

The other issue is around resources. Mr Moore and Mr Smyth said to me that they would second an officer to the Urban Services Committee to help manage this inquiry. I have had this offered to my committee as well. I sought advice from the Clerk on this because there are some interesting issues around our systems of governance that come up in the secondment of public servants to committee work. Are we blurring the lines? A public servant is employed to do the work of the government of the day. Suddenly they are positioned in a committee situation where they may well be required to separate themselves from that responsibility and work in a totally dispassionate way

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