Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3821 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

While it has seriously considered your suggestion the Committee has decided that its current commitments do not allow it to seek an additional reference at this time. However, the Committee will reconsider seeking a reference on the issue when it has concluded its current inquiry.

There is still interest in it at the national level. The minister is asking us to do a bit of an inquiry in relation to these matters in the ACT and forget the fact that the national emphasis might still be pursued at some later time. I consider his stubbornness on this issue to be quite astounding. For months he has been pushing this barrow and for months the committee has been trying to tell him that there are other ways of doing it which are more appropriate, but the minister continues to persist doggedly with the line that he has adopted in relation to referring to this Assembly committee work that ought to be conducted by the government.

I can only conclude that the minister's aim is to try to keep the committee busy doing things that he wants it to do rather than allowing the committee to do things that Assembly members want it to do and that he would rather set the priorities for the committees than have the committees set some of their own priorities. Yes, it is an obligation that this house can respond to, but I say to members in relation to this matter that it is clearly something about which there is interest at a national level, about which there will be an inquiry and about which there is already information available that the minister could, if he really wanted to, get some of his departmental officers to deal with or, if he considers it to be so important, hire some sort of consultant or someone else to deal with the issue.

To force it upon a committee in the way that the minister has just smells to me like some sort of ideological mindset, trying to keep the committee busy doing things that the government wants it to do, rather than on matters which are before the committee or might be taken on by the committee in the future. Mr Speaker, Labor will be opposing this silly move by the government.

Mr Moore made reference to the issue of taxis. I can just imagine what happened there: somebody from the taxi company or from the taxi industry said that we should have an inquiry and, as a member of the Legislative Assembly who wants to represent his constituents well, he said, "I will help you out, mate. I will get an inquiry started." Of course, he tried. Therefore, the person who approached him felt happy. But to use that as a reference in this debate is quite inappropriate.

It is clear that the deal here is that the government wants the committee to get busy on something that the government should be doing and it is something in which the minister is involved at one level or another at the appropriate ministerial council. It is an issue in which two areas of the national government have expressed an interest, that is, the relevant Senate committee and the relevant House of Representatives committee. They have said that it is important and they have indicated that they might deal with it later. Why on earth do you want to lock this Assembly into a minor inquiry in the scheme of things, one which looks just at the ACT, when it really would be better to see what the national outcomes were? If the government is so interested in it, why does it not just do so itself?

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .