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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (14 June) . . Page.. 1712 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

In the past I have gone to House of Representatives Practice and I have sought advice from the Clerk on a number of issues around the application to us of the Westminster conventions as a result of some confusion that I feel about the implications of their application and the implications of the fact that they are blurred. We have established practices and precedents in this place in a whole range of instances going to the budget, as the Chief Minister has mentioned. There is a non-governmental minister in the cabinet who has a list of issues in relation to which he has declared that he will not be bound by the usual conventions in relation to cabinet solidarity. I am not being personal here. That raises a number of issues which we on this side of the place have grappled with and have struggled to accept. There has been a very distinct blurring, to the point where normal conventions, conventions that we understand would apply to most Westminster parliaments, cannot be said to apply in this parliament.

It is a matter of concern, as the Chief Minister says, that at times we operate here on the basis of rules that we are developing as we go along, but the rules are not being written down anywhere. The precedents are not being recorded, as they are in House of Representatives Practice for instance. When we look to understand the conventions or the rules that apply in relation to parliamentary practice in this place we discover that they do not really apply at all. There is no document in effect, Mr Speaker.

I have often thought that we have probably reached the stage after 12 years of self-government when perhaps the Clerk of this place needs to develop an addendum to House of Representatives Practice as it applies in the ACT Legislative Assembly. I think we have reached that position. We have changed. We have altered the conventions. We have established a number of precedents that indicate that we have departed from a range of accepted conventions in relation to Westminster parliaments. I agree with the Chief Minister that there needs to be some device, some forum, some capacity for us as a parliament to decide on a process for recording the departures from convention that we accept as part and parcel of the operations of this parliament.

I think this is a very useful discussion. As the Chief Minister said, one's views of some of these issues are affected by the position one occupies in this place, but, as I said, I think each of us has the capacity to look a little more broadly at what is necessary for the appropriate functioning of this parliament.

I want to turn to the specifics of the bill that we are debating here today. I think there are a couple of things that could be said about it. At the time that there was debate within this place and within the community about the desirability of the inquiry into disability services in the ACT there was a very clear expression of the will of the majority of the members of this Assembly that such an inquiry, a significant inquiry, be undertaken. That was a concern and a desire that was reflected within the community as well. I think the government did respond to that pressure, or to the acknowledgment of that concern, in its appointment of Justice Gallop under the Inquiries Act. I take the point that the government, in establishing the inquiry, in effect has acknowledged that level of concern. The Chief Minister suggested today that the government, having relented or having acknowledged the level of concern, acted and established an inquiry under the Inquiries Act. It seems to me ironic that after the event we are now debating a piece of legislation that perhaps would have denied the executive the capacity to make the decision it ultimately took.

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