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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2551 ..

table them and not to allow them to come into being when we are going to have such a long period in which they will not be able to be scrutinised.

There is a fairly big gap in the sitting pattern currently. In April we had no sitting weeks and in July we have one sitting day. That is nearly a month. From December through to January we normally do not sit. That is about eight weeks. We are talking about something between 12 and 20 weeks when there will not be scrutiny of regulations. That will be in force; that will have effect as before. But no-one will be able to scrutinise them properly on behalf of the public.

The purpose of this motion is to bring to the attention of the Assembly that we are coming into an interesting crossover of electoral cycles, federal and local, and that there is a real likelihood that 16 October will be the federal election date, unless it is going to be on 7 August—and only one person knows that. But I think three months is way too long to be dropping very large blocks of regulations onto the table, without scrutiny, against significant bills: the OH&S, emergency services and gambling bills and possibly the trees and heritage bills. Then we will have between three and five months before members—indeed, members of the new Assembly—will be able to come forward and scrutinise them properly on behalf of the people of the ACT.

The purpose of the motion is, first, to bring to the attention of members that there is a possibility of this occurring and, second, to ask the government to try to have on the table before 16 August all the regulations that are attached to bills that are passed by this Assembly, so that this Assembly, having passed those bills, can scrutinise the regulations to make sure that understandings are kept and that the regulations, in which so much of the detail is—and we all know the devil is in the detail—are adhered to. With that, I simply put the motion to the Assembly for it to consider. I think it is a reasonable thing to do and would hope that the government sees the sense of in having proper scrutiny, given their commitment to honest, open and accountable government.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism, Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming and Acting Manager for Planning) (6.11): First of all, I will record our commitment that we will not be doing those things that are unnecessary. We will respect a caretaker period, and there will be no taxation changes during that period. On the other hand, a government must govern—as we have.

In recent times the quality of debate in this place has—very disappointingly, I have to say—descended, what with the personalisation of some of the comment, et cetera. Rising above that for the moment, I have to say that this government has governed well. You are trying to convince yourself that we are lazy and have not done things on time—all those things you need to whip yourself up in the lead-up to an election. But you will see the catalogue of what we have done in the course of the election campaign. You will see the catalogue of what we have not done. We will report to the electorate, and we are happy to allow the electorate to make their judgment.

Rest assured that a motion like this is pretty unnecessary, particularly in the context of this government. When you scrape away the personal invective that has flowed across here, you will see that we have governed well, governed very responsibly and governed within the confines of where we ought to govern, in the face of what at times has been

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