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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (30 August) . . Page.. 3797 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

There have been occasions over the last three years that each of us regrets. I am sure there have been occasions when each of us has regretted that we perhaps failed a personal standard that we may have set for ourselves. I have sought to address some of these in comments I have made about the way this place operates.

My further contribution to the debate will be about matters which need to be fleshed out-how this institution operates, the constraints we have applied to ourselves, the physical nature of the building, the extent to which we project ourselves to the community as an institution that believes in itself and believes that it has a right to be proud about its achievements and the extent to which we provide a rigorous form of governance to the territory. That is not to say that I am in any way commending the government we have received. I distinguish between government and governance.

I do not think we need to decry the achievements of this Assembly to the point that we have reached now, 12 years after self-government. Our achievements are significant. We have a right to have some pride in the way the place operates and the governance that is being delivered. But I think there are a lot of things wrong. As an Assembly, we are quite hard on ourselves. The Chief Minister, in his speech at the 10-year anniversary, made some mention of the extent to which there are certain constraints on the way in which members of this place operate. I think they are all issues that it is probably worth having a discussion about.

But there are issues, too, which go to the heart of what Mr Moore said. I might just read the contribution Professor Pettit made at the conference. This goes directly to what Mr Moore said. This is an issue I am more than happy to debate again. I will quote from two pages from Professor Pettit, because they go to the heart of what Mr Moore was talking about:

With a democratic competitive system of government, the system itself is directed towards a goal that transcends the goals of the politicians who participate in the system. The system is designed to promote effective and accountable government, let us suppose, but even if politicians have an interest in those high-minded goals, their more immediate aim is always going to be their own electoral success.

He goes on:

The ideal in politics, as in these other areas, is that while the politician may be moved by their own particular interest in electoral success, the fact that they all pursue this will mean that the goals of the political system-effective and accountable government-will be achieved as a side-effect. Take the vision of the Federalist Papers, a document written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison when in 1787 they wanted to persuade the electorate of New York of the benefits of the newly written US Constitution.

I will pass over some of it. He goes on to say:

If the vision of the Federalist Papers-ultimately the vision of the democratic tradition-is correct, then we should expect to find in politics a hurly burly in which individuals incessantly challenge and contest, deride and accuse, one another. But we should not necessarily despair of this pattern, for it may well be that out of such chaos comes an assurance that the systemic goals of politics-say, effective and accountable government-will be achieved. Better the hurly burly of politics than

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