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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3715 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

environment, and to include the Council of Social Service is about the right to have social justice implemented and acknowledged in business activities. That is why we want to get that broad representation onto the boards; that is why we are challenging the way this government chooses to focus just on the business aspect of territory-owned corporations.

It is disappointing that this bill will not be getting support today. Those different views and that expertise need badly to be represented on boards. It is really disturbing that Mr Humphries apparently thinks that it is only accountants or lawyers and so on-and I know we have had this debate many times-who will be able to efficiently manage a territory-owned corporation and who are appropriate for a board.

The point we are trying to make here is that, if you want good decisions made, you have to take all these aspects into account. If you do not, you are failing in your responsibilities as the government of the day. We need to integrate these broad structural accountabilities-to more than the dollar-into how we operate.

Mr Berry: Mr Deputy Speaker, I have been most critical of the government's management-

Mr Moore: I think she closed the debate.

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Moore. Yes, the debate has been closed.

MR BERRY: I seek leave to speak for an extra five minutes.

Leave granted.

MR BERRY: I have been most critical of the government's management of its territory-owned corporations in recent times over particular matters, but having representatives on boards just cannot work in a parliamentary democracy. I think this was put up to lose because it does not make sense to me. The people who will be held responsible are the shareholders, who, after all, are put where they are by this place. In the end, if we do not like the way they are managing their territory-owned corporations, we can do our very best to take away that responsibility, which we intend to do on 20 October. We would do it today, except that we do not think there are enough people here to help us.

Mr Moore: Not enough time today.

MR BERRY: Well, you have removed the 11 o'clock rule, haven't you? So we might still have enough time.

Mr Speaker, I sympathise with what Ms Tucker is doing. There may not be the sort of people on boards who would manage them in keeping with the way that she might like or, indeed, that I might like. If Labor were in a position of appointing people to boards, it might appoint quite different sorts of people from the ones the Liberals would appoint.

It all boils down to how we look after territory-owned corporations and whether we have them or not. Whether we have them or not is a matter for this Assembly, and how we manage them is a matter for this Assembly as well. So, whilst I accept her reservations

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