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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3816 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

The very first term of reference is with particular reference to the current composition of the ACT teaching force. Does the minister know the current composition of his teaching force? I suspect that he does. What, then, does he expect the committee to tell him?

I was a little curious to see the motion on the notice paper in the first place because I do believe that there are matters that are correctly within the province of the committees of this Assembly and there are matters that are correctly within the province of the government, and this is one of the latter. If the minister wants an inquiry into his own teaching force and its ability to teach into the future, he should be instituting the inquiry, not asking an Assembly committee to do it, particularly when I understand that the chair of the committee has already indicated that the committee is fully employed and probably could not meet and undertake the inquiry in the terms that the minister is putting forward. What, then, is the point of imposing such an inquiry on a committee that cannot meet the requirements? Mr Speaker, I do not know that I can support the minister in this motion.

The minister made some reference to a pertinent comment in the media recently about what committees are here to do. I thought that it was a grossly impertinent comment, to be frank with you, for anybody, whether in this place or outside, to say that committees should take on any inquiry that the government sees fit to impose on them, whether an inquiry into disability services or an inquiry into teacher services, and when the Assembly's response is to say that it is a job for the government itself to undertake, the committees are criticised because they are not doing what they are being paid to do. I think that that was a grossly impertinent comment.

One of the strengths of this place, which everybody has recognised for the last 10 years, is the strength of the committee system in this place. Before that, nobody has had the arrogance to say that the committees are not doing what they are paid to do. With odd exceptions, the committees are very heavily laden and they respond to the job that they are appointed to do. Whoever made the impertinent remark that they should be earning the money that they are paid for being there would know full well that the only people on committees who get paid more are the chairs. The rest of us do not get any money to sit on committees. I put in many hours of work on committees, and have done for virtually all of the last 10 years, and to be told that I am not earning the money that I am paid to sit on committees is a gross insult to me and I do not accept it, Mr Speaker.

I put this inquiry in the same category as the inquiry into disability services. It seemed to be the opinion of this government that a committee of the Assembly should undertake that inquiry. It was the view of the Assembly that it should not do so, and there were some very good reasons for that. The government still avoided the issue by appointing somebody other than the person recommended by the Assembly, so that they are not even prepared to follow the instructions or directions that the Assembly gives them. They do not seem to understand the fact that they are a minority government and that when the majority of members of this place give them a direction it is because we mean it. We are not just playing games here.

We have already had one set - to on whether this sort of reference should occur. I am very much afraid that we may well be getting into another one, because I think that this inquiry is in the same category as the inquiry into disability services. It is an inquiry that

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