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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1198 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

In a way, that is part of the answer. What they have done, it seems to me, has been to pass the consultation phase to the committees, but some groups may care to make a submission direct to the government. According to the response, several groups made a submission direct to the government. It seems that the government is passing that on to our committees. That is something, but I think that it is a worry for committees. We need to know whether there was other consultation within government. That sort of consultation is a very extensive exercise. It is not something that just happens. I can remember back to the days of the Follett government and of this government when there has been very considerable input from groups direct to government.

I think we need a clear statement from the government on whether that has stopped. Is that the end of it? Is the government now saying, "You can send us something if you want, but we would prefer you to go to the committees"? I would like to see a clear statement about that. I happen to think that the government cannot remove itself from that process, that the government has to listen directly, immediately, to what people and groups are saying. I think they can get that first hand, rather than via a committee. It is very important that the government not distance itself from the community.

Secondly, if they are going to take that very extensive load and pass it to committees, notwithstanding Mr Humphries' somewhat negative comments last year about how the committees had done things, they have to do a lot more to help the committees. Every committee has one secretary and time is precious as there are so many things to do so that, if they want the committees to pick up this full consultation load, they have to give the committees more resources. There is no question about that. But that has not happened. I do not think that Mr Humphries can complain about the committees' response and ACTCOSS' response when it has been said that the government has not given the time and the help needed. We need that help if the government wants us to do that job.

We need a better basis for discussion in our committee. I did not know whether, when we had a submission from, say, ACROD, the government had already considered that submission. Nothing that we received told us that. We need to have that sort of information. Next year, if this systems proceeds and we look for improvements that seem slow to come, we need to have an attachment telling us what the government has done, whom they have seen and what they have rejected. Rejection is an important thing. Recommendation 2 says that, where proposals made to the committee are rejected by the government, we get a written rationale as to why.

If we have to pick up all this work, we need to understand better all these backgrounds and all the circumstances. As it is, we got 17 submissions and we had to consider the whole context just with those submissions. We did not know what else had happened. I know that I am labouring the point here, but there are very significant difficulties. I know that ACTCOSS gave us a very good submission. It gave the same submission to all committees and it was very comprehensive. I assume that ACTCOSS, being the professional body that it is, also sent that submission to the government, but I do not know what the government made of it. I do not know whether the government considered it a very sound submission and accepted this, that or something else out of it. We need to know those things.

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