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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (27 November) . . Page.. 4809 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Ms Dundas suggests that the speed of the passage of the bill through the Assembly is a bit on the quick side. I suggest that this is something which has been spoken about in this place for a long time. In the content of this bill, we are talking about nothing more than the mechanics of achieving something we have been talking about for a long time. If people believe they have not had enough time to look at this bill with its two-line change, then I suggest they have a good look at their diaries, because they are out of control.

Both Ms Tucker and Ms Dundas made points about this not being a democratic process. Ms Tucker talked about loss of sovereignty-not the will of the people. She said the community is wary of majority government. She has no proof-just a wild statement that the community is wary of majority government. Not one member of the community has ever broached the subject with me since I have been in this place. I have heard it a stack of times from Ms Tucker, but I have not had one person down the pub tell me, "Hey-you guys cannot get in there with a majority government."

This Assembly is not the first one which happens to suffer from the balance of power syndrome. What happens is this: we often have decisions of some moment, moved either by the opposition or the government-it matters not-which sink or swim on the whim of one member of the crossbench. One member of the crossbench does not represent this town. Each of those comes from a different-no, I tell a lie. Ms Tucker and Mrs Cross come from the same electorate. There is nobody on that crossbench from my electorate, so what right do any of these people have to try to influence what is going to happen in my electorate, any more than I have a right to influence what is going to happen in theirs?

I suggest that a person who gets elected with 12 per cent of the vote in one electorate has a disproportionate distribution of power in this place. We ought to be more worried about minority government than about majority government. It seems to me that, when Liberal and Labor agree on an issue in this place, we actually, at the moment, represent 14 out of 17. That sounds like a majority representational view to me. So I reject out of hand any suggestion that, because the minority view is not heard, the democratic process has not been honoured. That is a lot of tripe.

Ms Dundas made the point that maybe the Carnell government was not the best one we had ever seen in our lives; that the Chief Minister left, and so on. I might remind Ms Dundas that it was not the four-year term of the Carnell government; it was in fact the six years and nine months term. In fact, it was the second term on which that government was being judged by peers in here-not necessarily by those out there. People will remember that, even at the height of her difficulties within this Assembly, the Chief Minister still held a fairly popular vote out there. I do not think that argument holds a cupful of cold water, quite frankly. The numbers are all wrong. The numbers are totally wrong.

Ms Dundas said something else, which I am paraphrasing. She said words to the effect that the democratic institution should not exist for the economy. In other words, I believe she is making a comparison with the chicken and egg stuff here. Which comes first-the chicken or the egg? What is made to serve what? I would agree with her. You obviously do not have a system of governance to make sure everybody is rich, but you certainly cannot ignore the implications of a decision. You cannot ignore the implications of governance over the economy and decisions we make. It even goes down to the fact that

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