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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Wednesday, 18 August 2004) . . Page.. 3837 ..

adhere to. For instance, when we sat from 8.00 pm on a Friday until 1.45 on Saturday morning, breaks were not enforced and they should have been.

There are many ways of addressing these issues to ensure that everyone is treated fairly. But this motion is an appalling waste of time from members of the government and backbenchers who are so irrelevant that, in the last two sitting weeks, they forfeit one of their items of business to deal with a motion that they say will make our lives easier. We are not here to make our lives easier; we are here to serve the people of the ACT. We should serve the people of the ACT by doing our job, which is not a nine-to-five job.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism, Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming, and Acting Minister for Planning) (11.59): I would like to remind members of Parkinson’s law, which effectively says that the amount of work we do in this place will expand to fill the available space. That is what has happened in here. I agree with much of what Mrs Dunne has said, with the qualification that I did not really sign up to listen to repetitive speeches—speeches with an information content and relevance index of zero. I have been in only two assemblies but, more in this Assembly than the last, we have witnessed whole periods of time taken up with particularly members of the opposition rising to give speeches that have already been given.

Mrs Dunne, you are right. Had we not been trapped in this place listening to that boring repetition, we might have been out in the community, and we might have been doing something positive. There seems to be, in the minds of some, a belief that the volume of contribution to Hansard will somehow be a measure of the amount of work they have done in this place. I do not accept that that is the case. As I have said, we have seen in this place an increase in the repetition. That is either some form of a “We’ll wear ’em down tactic” or a sign of ill-disciplined, untidy thinking on the part of the opposition. Discipline in the time allowed might focus the minds on getting the points across and having a full and complete debate without necessarily having to repeat and repeat, as some form of demonstration that, “We are working harder than you are”, or, “We are more passionate about this particular exercise than you are.”

Similarly, we have seen an increase in the instance of tactical points of order in this place, turning questions without notice into debate, disrupting an answer that is not going the way the questioner would have liked. More of our time has been taken up in other than productive work. Mrs Dunne, I would be happy to stay here 24 hours around the clock if we are being productive!

The point behind this motion is the fact that there is so much unproductive time in this place; and I have to say that the opposition has been the major contributor to that unproductive time. From time to time we see extensions for people to deliver their speeches. That again is just a case of ill-discipline. Go to Capital Hill, sit in there for a while and ask for an extension!

What we are saying here is that if, as in other parliaments, there is a framework, a discipline is placed on members, and that will in turn focus the work of the place so that we get the essence and do what we need to do and not waste each other’s time. I do not know about other members, but I have to confess that there have been times when

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