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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (30 August) . . Page.. 3796 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

In the conference that was held to celebrate 10 years of self-government in the ACT, there were a number of significant contributions, one of them by the now Chief Minister. The Chief Minister gave credence to the suggestion that we were continuing to develop a viable and quite vital democracy here, and that with the effluxion of time we would develop an evolutionary edge over other Australian democratic systems as our current system of government continued to develop. Perhaps the Chief Minister was correct in that assessment. I hope it remains his view. I am not quite sure how that endorsement of the system we currently have fits with his recent pre-election push for a council-style government.

I am always willing to engage in a debate around forms of government-the Westminster hybrid we have, the extent to which we have elements of both the Westminster and the US system, how we have melded those and how we continue to develop. These are issues that we should continue to discuss, and we should continue to debate the evolution of this place.

I note that Professor Pettit, in his report, made some play about the need for us, having regard to our hybrid system, to develop a range of appropriate conventions in relation to, for instance, the budget process. I think experience in this place tells us that that is a job that is overdue. It is an issue I have raised previously. There is real confusion within this place around the extent to which the conventions are concrete or what the conventions are.

I do not think any of us, if asked, could point to the range of conventions which have evolved or developed in this place and which we all agree are the conventions of this place. That concerns me. Among the 17 of us there should be some unanimity around what the rules or conventions are that we agree, in a formal sense, apply in this place. That is just one issue.

Another issue was raised by the Auditor-General in his report No 14, following the Bruce Stadium issue, in relation to what the understanding in this Assembly is around ministerial responsibility? This is an issue that has generated significant debate over the last three years and significant heat and acrimony. It goes to the issue of what we as an Assembly regard as benchmarks in relation to ministerial or executive responsibilities. The Auditor-General, in that report, recommended that this Assembly needed to address that issue. He found from his investigations that there was no semblance of agreement or understanding on what this Assembly regards as levels of appropriate ministerial responsibility.

I come to the issue that was the focus of Mr Moore's contribution to the debate today. It was an address about the personal relations that apply in this place as much as a discussion about the adversarial nature of the Westminster system or a hybrid Westminster system. I took Mr Moore's contribution to be more than just saying that the adversarial system is not working particularly well or has basic flaws and that we need to address the basic nature of the system. I took Mr Moore to be saying that we do not do it particularly well. I concede that.

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