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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (14 June) . . Page.. 1713 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

I am quite happy to say that we will not be supporting this bill today. I am not quite sure, had the government retained what I thought was a recalcitrant attitude to the need for an inquiry, whether the Labor Party's position would be what it is today. I believe and I accept that the government responded in a way that we would have responded at the time, and it responded without the necessity of this Assembly debating a bill which would have forced it to do so.

Once again we come to the point that we have a minority government. This is another perhaps uncomfortable feature of being a member of an executive in this place in a circumstance of minority government. There is a suggestion around that we have institutionalised minority government. It is a result perhaps of what we regard here in the ACT as the institutionalising of that that we do have this very distinct blurring of so many of the so-called conventions or rules, particularly those that relate to the executive vis-a-vis the legislature, and in this instance with some carry across in relation to the relationship between the executive, the legislature and perhaps the judiciary.

To some extent much of what the Chief Minister said in his speech really was a commentary on the difficulties inherent in managing, as an assembly or a government, in a parliament in which you do not control the numbers. That is another debate. A debate about the relationship between the executive and the legislature in this parliament, where we have had nothing but minority government, will be different from a debate in any other parliament where there is majority government. That is a simple fact of life at the moment.

There are separate elements in any debate on whether or not a minority government should accept the will of the majority of the legislature whilst not trampling or trespassing on the executive's inherent rights and need to be able to take the decisions of an executive meant to govern in the best interests of the community. You have no argument with me, Chief Minister, that majority government delivers better government than minority government. I am not sure that you are suggesting that.

Mr Humphries: I did not say that.

MR STANHOPE: I am prepared to suggest it. I am prepared to maintain that I see nothing in the operations of this parliament with minority government that is an enhancement of the democratic process. I see nothing in this parliament that leads me to believe that minority government delivers better outcomes or better government than majority government. I need to be convinced of that. My 31/2 years of experience in this place does not lead me to that conclusion. But we have accepted the fact of Hare-Clark and we will operate within it. We will campaign within it, but that does not mean that we accept minority government as the desirable outcome of Hare-Clark. I do not believe there is any correlation between the two. I will conclude on those remarks.

I think it is good that the Chief Minister has approached discussion on this bill in the way that he has. I think it is well past time that we as a parliament thought more seriously about how we can advance a debate about the conventions under which this parliament operates. We are well past the date when we do need a clearer understanding. I think it would avoid some of the frictions, perhaps some of the unnecessary frictions, that are an incident of a vigorous democracy. There is a real misunderstanding about the appropriate role.

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