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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 1 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 46 ..
MR HARGREAVES (continuing):
(4) Each committee shall consist of three members.
(5) Each committee shall have power to consider and make use of the evidence and records of the relevant standing committee appointed during the previous Assembly.
(6) Each committee be provided with necessary staff, facilities and resources.
- The foregoing provisions of this resolution, so far as they are inconsistent with the standing orders, have effect notwithstanding anything contained in the standing orders.
I apologise to members for the lack of notice but I thought it was a bit inappropriate to start circulating the motion while the inaugural speeches were being made. I thank members for their indulgence.
The creation of standing committees in this form bears some explanation. In the Fourth Assembly the standing committee structure mirrored the ministries, and whilst this had some machinery advantages, it posed in our view some problems with the potential breach of the notion of the separation of powers. The advantages of that system were that it was easy for the machinery of government to operate. The standing committees mirrored not only the ministries but also the departmental structures, and thus the thinking and considerations of those committees were naturally directed to the activities of those departments.
An examples of that direction of thought is the notion of automatic consideration of annual reports. It is natural that if a committee mirrored the departments then consideration of the activities of a department on an annual basis would be appropriate. The same could be said of the referral of parts of the budget process to committees. The information provided to committees on budgetary matters was that of a list of initiatives and not a full budget for that particular department. Even so, considerations of the committee were limited to the bottom line of that particular department.
In essence therefore, the elected representatives of the people of the ACT were not allowed, through this referral process, to consider amounts or activities outside the parameters of the department or ministry. There was a real chance that the standing committees would become an extension of the executive.
It was the truth that in the last Assembly committees were given the responsibility of choosing between a number of deserving cases and being asked to decide on a priority of requests. It is the role of committees to recommend to the Assembly, not to be a decision-making body. The executive is charged with making decisions. The committees assist the Assembly, and if this assists the government of the day, the coincidence is fortuitous.
The Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety, with which I am most familiar, was credited by the last government as choosing a site for the prison. The committee, in fact, recommended a choice of two, from a selection, and the government did the choosing. The temptation for this to recur is exacerbated when the committees mirror departments.
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