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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (29 November) . . Page.. 3444 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

a cooperative fashion instead of a confrontational fashion, you could easily do it with 15 people. You would still have an executive. You could still call them ministers and you could still send them off to ministerial council meetings, heads of government meetings and all those flash things that we get involved in when really what we are here to do is to govern the Australian Capital Territory.

We can still do all of that if we want to. But the question is: in the interests of bipartisanship, would the Labor Party and the Liberal Party support such a proposal? If they would, let us have their hands up now and, after we adjourn tonight, let us go and sit in the cabinet office upstairs and figure out how we would make a system with only 15 members work in the interests of this community and in the interests of bipartisanship. If we cannot do that, let me not hear again a single mention of the word "bipartisanship" in the debate tonight.

MR QUINLAN (8.12): Let me start by acknowledging Mr Kaine's contribution. Given his long years of service in this place, I think that we have to bow to his learned experience, having held many positions within this Assembly, including that of Chief Minister. I guess that his years here have led him to the conclusions that he just espoused while on his feet. I do think that there might be a few little problems along the way in terms of competing interests in the setting up of the committees, but it is a most noble sentiment that Mr Kaine has expressed here tonight. I think that that is all that should be said of it.

I listened to Mr Moore and I found myself agreeing with him to some extent, which is not a position I would like to be in too often. He talked about doing the right thing and taking the politics out of it. Of course, I would have to be convinced that there is somebody in this place who is capable of thinking about this proposition without doing a little mental calculation as to what impact it might have on them or their own particular group. I would still wish to be convinced of that.

I do concede that there are problems with the committee structure and the amount of work there. I am a committee chair. By the good graces of Ms Tucker, I have chaired a quite substantial inquiry. I have chaired a select committee on superannuation. The chair ends up doing a lot of work in relation to the preparation of reports. In particular, a couple of the reports brought down in this place by committees I have chaired have taken a considerable amount of work. I have also been involved in estimates committees and we are now involved in the draft budget process.

Certainly, all of those activities mean that you cannot do anything other than perform suboptimally, given the workload and given the amount of material you have to observe. Equally, I think that we should recognise that it is probably difficult for ministers because of the spectrum of portfolios. Everybody has just about a poker hand of ministries to look after. The ministry is about to be shrunk to four people. I imagine that it is just as difficult for ministers to absorb all of the information associated with the spectrum of portfolios as it is for shadow ministers who have a number of areas that they have to keep up with.

I support wholeheartedly Mr Stanhope's call for consultation on this issue, but I think that the consultation will have to be conducted very carefully. We have had self-government for 11 years and after 11 years there is emerging grudging acceptance of the

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