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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 10 Hansard (18 October) . . Page.. 3179 ..

MR QUINLAN: I rather look forward to your chairmanship, Mr Hird. I will, in parallel with this process, have a considerable workload within the public accounts committee. A number of issues that go to the heart and style of government need to be addressed. A number of amendments to legislation and administrative regulations need to be brought forward so that we never get anywhere near the shambolic exercise that is catalogued in here, and it is not completely catalogued because we cannot find all the papers. I rather suspect that I will be busy and I do look forward to your leadership in this matter, Mr Hird.

Let me conclude by saying that, if it is the will of this Assembly that we do so, we will participate; but we will participate with the reservations, and I think quite reasonable reservations as we head up to an election next year, that I put forward. Having anything other than that expectation is being quite naive. I do not know how Mr Humphries can keep a straight face while he delivers with high tone as to the motivation behind this motion. You know the motivation behind it and we know the motivation behind it but, given the numbers, we shall go through the pantomime.

MR CORBELL (11.52): Mr Speaker, my colleague Mr Quinlan has outlined the major objections which the Labor Party has to this proposal. I want to outline a number of others. Having been chairman of an estimates committee for the past two years, I am conscious of the resourcing implications of the tasks that such committees take on. It is quite clear to me that the proposal put by the Chief Minister this morning is a dramatic change from the way that these matters have been addressed. It also presents a significant challenge to the ability of any such committee to adequately address the matters the Chief Minister proposes in his motion.

Put simply, I do not have any confidence that any committee, regardless of the capacity or well meaning of its members, will be able to properly address such terms of reference, simply because this Assembly and individual non-government members, non-executive members, do not have the resources to properly analyse the broad range of complex issues Mr Humphries proposes in this motion.

The Chief Minister and the government have the Treasury and their respective departments. Members of this place operate on a shoestring in comparison. For that reason, I do not believe that the government's intent is a serious one in relation to this motion. Indeed, it is more a mechanism for showing that you are doing something because you know you have to be seen to be doing it. That, Mr Speaker, is really the underlying motive for this motion today. As Mr Quinlan has said, if this motion is successful today, of course Labor will participate; but it will participate with a cynicism and with the reserve that this motion deserves.

MS TUCKER (11.54): Mr Speaker, I wish to speak to this motion. It presents difficulties for me because, while in principle the Greens have been supportive of trialling this sort of concept, I had not seen this motion until last night and I do not understand the detail. We are sympathetic with the concept and I have nominated for the committee. I circulated an amendment to the reporting date, but Mr Humphries has just spoken to me about it and said that he feels that it would not work because of what he understands the brief of this committee to be, which I did not understand because he had not had a chance to explain it to me and it is not clear from the written terms of reference.

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