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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4227 ..

establishing the members of the task force—which we need to do to get the education going and to start doing the work—should be made disallowable on the second last sitting day of this parliament would require the establishment of that task force to be put off until the business of the next Assembly, the election of the next government and, of course, the first sitting of the next Assembly.

Our view is that it will significantly delay the establishment of that task force and, while we could put membership on that task force, I think there is a requirement to attract a person with a level of expertise to the chair of the task force. It would be quite difficult to start that process off and say, “We’d like to have you, but it’s up to the next Assembly, who will be elected shortly, to determine whether you’re the right person for the job.”

The timing of it, and the fact that we are near the end of this Assembly and are setting ourselves some pretty tight time frames for reporting back and for a whole load of work to be done, means that this time you will have to have a little faith that we will consult widely and that we will not establish a task force that is not going to be inclusive of the community it seeks expertise from. I can give that commitment, as the minister responsible, as of this moment, but we will have to put concerns about appointments to one side in this instance and allow the task force to be established without the requirement for a disallowable instrument.

MS DUNDAS (9.47): Mr Speaker, I will not be supporting these amendments either. Normally, I am quite happy to support things being made disallowable so that the Assembly has time to consider them, but when we specifically put the chief executive of each administrative unit on a task force, we are very much prescribing who it is that we want on that task force. It would not be much use if the Assembly disallowed the fact that each chief executive is part of this task force, when we have prescribed that each chief executive should be part of this task force.

I actually think that having the task force established in the way the minister has put it down is quite useful. We will be able to bring together all the different parts of government to address this issue in a holistic way—looking at how it impacts on each separate unit of government—and have them work together to find more of the problems and more of the solutions.

I want to put on the record that I support the intention of what Mrs Cross is trying to do but, because there are just too many problems in trying to make that work within the time frame, as the minister has outlined, and also within the membership of the task force we are prescribing, I cannot support the amendments at the moment.

MR STEFANIAK (9.49): I note that, after what Ms Dundas has said supporting the government’s position, these amendments will fail. That being so, I will offer a suggestion. I appreciate that the minister wants to establish this task force as soon as possible. That is the wish of the opposition as well and probably everyone concerned.

In regard to the membership of the task force, there is probably nothing to stop the minister, even during a caretaker period, telling other members of the Assembly what it should be. If members are happy with that, that is probably the end of it. I recall that in the last Assembly during the caretaker period a contract was made because both the government and the opposition had agreed to it to enable a major project to progress.

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