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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2305 ..

Thursday, 27 June 2002

The Assembly met at 10.30 am.

(Quorum formed.)

MR SPEAKER (Mr Berry) took the chair and asked members to stand in silence and pray or reflect on their responsibilities to the people of the Australian Capital Territory.

Legal Affairs-Standing Committee

Report No 4

MR STEFANIAK (10.32): Mr Speaker, I present the following report:

Legal Affairs-Standing Committee-Report No 4-The Appropriateness of the Size of the Legislative Assembly for the ACT and Options for Changing the Number of Members, Electorates and Any Other Related Matter, dated 26 June 2002, together with a copy of the extracts of the minutes of proceedings and a dissenting report.

I seek leave to move a motion authorising the publication of the report.

Leave granted.

MR STEFANIAK: I move:

That the report be authorised for publication.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

MR STEFANIAK: I move:

That the report be noted.

Mr Speaker, in December last year the Legislative Assembly directed the Legal Affairs committee to examine the appropriate size of the Assembly and other related matters. The Assembly set a reporting deadline of today, and the committee is pleased to meet this deadline.

We called for public comment. I was surprised that we did not get quite as much public comment as I thought we would. Nevertheless, we received 29 formal submissions. All were authorised for publication, and each is very carefully summarised in this report.

Readers can see the great range of views that were put to the committee. Those views range from doing away with the Assembly altogether through to reducing its current 17 members down to 15, to raising the number of members to 21, 23, 25 or even 35.

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