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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 1 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 121 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

During the previous debate the major parties indicated that they wanted public consultation on this issue before they could reach a particular position. Well, I suggest we get on with it and progress this debate. I recall that Mr Humphries suggested at the time my motion was last debated that perhaps there could be a deliberative poll on this issue, and this would not be a bad idea. There certainly needs to be some background information or a discussion paper prepared for the public to explain the pros and cons of this issue, as I have noticed that there is very little knowledge in this community of what MLAs in this Assembly actually do on a day-to-day basis. All they hear in the media is that the Assembly or the government made this or that decision. But they never hear about all the lead-up work done by members in making these decisions. The extensive work of the community is also not widely known outside of those groups or individuals who participate in particular inquiries or through other means participate in the democratic process.

It is also the case that if members keep avoiding this issue and the Assembly becomes less and less effective in meeting the community's needs as Canberra's population grows, then the negative perceptions of politicians will increase anyway. I would much prefer to make this Assembly more effective by increasing the number of members and risk any short-term political backlash than let the work of this Assembly gradually decline in quality as we become overloaded with demands.

My motion attempts to move this debate forward by calling on the Chief Minister to work with the federal Minister for Territories to give the ACT the legislative scope to increase the number of members. Under the self-government legislation we need to get the approval of the federal minister before we can do anything to increase the number of MLAs. My motion calls for public consultation on expanding the size of the Assembly. It specifically calls for public consultation on the proposal which has been most commonly mentioned-to increase the size of the Assembly to 21 members by having three equal electorates of seven members rather than the current lopsided arrangement of one seven-member electorate and two five-member electorates.

Mr Speaker, you said that you wanted to reduce the amount of discussion when people were speaking in this Assembly. I would like Ms Dundas to be able to listen to what I am saying. Would you mind, Mr Humphries, waiting until I have finished?

MR SPEAKER: I think that is a fair point.

MS TUCKER: Thank you. The ACT people have previously entrenched the Hare-Clark electoral system by referendum. I believe we should respect this and work within the principles of that electoral system of multi-member electorates and make it work even better.

I have been told that an amendment is going to be moved to send this matter to a committee. I want to elaborate on why I am concerned about that. I have no problem with a committee looking at this issue, but not at this point in time. It is clear that there needs to be some kind of educative process, which I have mentioned in my speech, and a deliberative poll. A deliberative poll is an interesting suggesting because this gives people an opportunity to understand the issues. But there are other ways of doing that. You can have a discussion paper which raises issues, the pros and cons and so on, with the community. It would be totally fine for that to be referred to a committee and the

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