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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (2 March) . . Page.. 506 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

I urge members to consider that the full powers of standing committees have not been exercised in this place. It is about time that they were, but we will leave that to the time and place where that is deemed to be appropriate. I conclude my comments at this point.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Debate resumed from 11 March 1999, on motion by Ms Tucker:

And on the amendment moved by Mr Berry:

MR STEFANIAK (Minister for Education) (12.19): The Government's response to this was noted some months ago, indeed last year. We now have a remaining matter which relates to an extraordinary amendment moved by Mr Berry many months ago. I quote:

The dissenting report was Mr Hird's. That is a most extraordinary motion. It is very dangerous for an Assembly to reject a dissenting report. It goes against every tenet of committee reports and the ability of members - under I think standing order 251 - to dissent. If I recall the debate correctly, Mr Berry took umbrage at the fact that he felt that Mr Hird did not write the full dissenting report himself.

Without commenting on that, in my experience on committees, certainly as a committee chair, the draft report is often prepared by the committee secretary. It would then be amended when the committee would meet. I wonder whether this committee's chair, Ms Tucker, drafted the entire report or whether it was done by somebody else. I do not think it matters whether Mr Hird or any other member of the committee does the entire draft, or part of it, which they then adopt, as long as, at the end of the day, they ratify it and that is in fact their report or their dissenting report. Surely that is the issue.

In this instance Mr Hird has presented a dissenting report signed by him. He has spoken quite forcefully to it. I think that is the end of the matter. It would be an appalling, a dreadful precedent - indeed, almost a Stalinist type of action - were this Assembly to accept Mr Berry's suggestion that a member cannot dissent if other people do not like what he says or what is included in his report, and it is then rejected. That is ludicrous.

Does that mean that if Mr Rugendyke or Mr Kaine presents a dissenting report at some future stage and the committee or some people in the Assembly take umbrage at it, or some aspect of it - how it may have been prepared or whatever - he is then told that the Assembly rejects it? That smacks of totalitarianism. It has no place in a democracy.

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