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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2845 ..

I concur with the statement made by Mr Smyth about the resourcing of committees and members in general, but I raise a cautionary note. At this part of the electoral cycle rather than the economic cycle, people are not very keen to talk about the number of members of this place, but the fact that today one of our number has taken extended sick leave does draw attention to the inordinate workload of members of this place, particularly ministers.

I think that as a reference for future assemblies we should be looking seriously at the number of members we have in this place, because if we are down one person it is a very noticeable thing and the place does not run as well. So, not so much for this debate today but for future reference, the next Assembly should look at whether there should be more members. I commend the item to the Assembly.

MR CORNWELL (10.55): I join my colleagues in commenting on this line item. I would like to follow up on what Mrs Dunne said in relation to the number of members. I appreciate that this line item does not canvas the desperate need, as far as I am concerned, for additional members for this house, but I do believe that that is something that the new Assembly should address and should take up with the Commonwealth parliament to see whether matters can be improved here.

I know that this is an unpopular subject, but I am not exactly remiss in addressing unpopular subjects in this house. It is often forgotten in relation to this 17-member Assembly that we do have the same responsibilities as state parliaments with many more members. What happens here—may I say that I am surprised that there has not been a similar occurrence to the one today—is that the absence of one or two people puts enormous strains upon those left, to a much greater extent than would be found in a state parliament.

I believe that that needs to be looked at. It also should be looked at from the point of view of the need for additional staff. Mr Smyth spoke of the need for additional staff in the secretariat and the availability of additional resources in members’ offices. The fact is that no matter how many staff you have the result of their work would be still being channelled into 17 members. I do not believe that that would necessarily solve the problem.

As I have said on a number of occasions, this Assembly has been remarkably timid in the last 15 years of its existence in its approach to having the proper resources to govern this territory. We have the absurd situation that 330,000 people are now living in the ACT and we still have only 17 members, which was the benchmark for membership15 years ago, based on a ratio of something like one:10,000 people.

That really does need to be addressed, but it cannot be addressed just by providing additional resources and additional staff. We need to address the fundamental problem, which is that if we are going to govern this territory in an efficient and proper manner we need the resources to do so. I know that there is still some resentment out there about self-government. My response to that is that I regret that those views are still held, but nothing is going to change. Therefore, we must make the best of it. We cannot do that without the resources.

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