Page 43 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 7 December 2004
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be a stand-alone public works committee separate from the Planning and Environment Committee, simply because the work of the planning and environment committee was sufficiently large that it was impossible for them to do the work of a public works scrutiny committee. In the course of these negotiations, there was, in fact, some discussion that at the very least that work would be directed to the public accounts committee.
The interesting thing is that we have the public accounts committee responsible for sustainability while we have the planning and environment committee responsible for ecological sustainability. So, for the second Assembly in a row, there is a break-up of a nexus between sustainability and ecological sustainability, which means that although, as Dr Foskey has said, the government says it has a commitment to sustainability, it does not understand the first instance. In the first item about sustainability, it just has not got it.
The most improbable aspect of this whole general purpose committee structure is paragraph 4. This is where we get to the guts of it. This is where you see just how paranoid this government is. When it really comes to the crunch, not only have they put together a dog’s breakfast of a committee system; they have put together a situation where they will have control of all the vital committees.
The Standing Committee on Education, Training and Young People, the Standing Committee on Health and Disability and the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment will have two government members, and these committees will not work in the way that they did in previous assemblies. This will be a rubber stamp for the government, and we have another situation here—
Mr Quinlan: It’s got to be constructive instead of political.
MRS DUNNE: Yes, it is about politics, but it is not about doing exactly what the Labor Party wants. I do not recall that you got 100 per cent of the votes in this place; I do not recall you even got 50 per cent of the votes in this place. You do not vote for—
Mr Quinlan: Dr Foskey said we’d have 17 seats in any other parliament.
MRS DUNNE: Yes, by putting together a committee system like this, you run only the agenda of the ascendant party to the disadvantage of the roughly 60 per cent of people in the ACT who did not vote for you. If we pass this motion today there will be no scope for a non-Labor view being expressed, or even investigated—
Mr Quinlan: Or dominated.
MRS DUNNE: especially in the Standing Committee on Education, Training and Young People, the Standing Committee on Health and Disability and the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment. If members of this place come in here with a recommendation for a reference to the committee, if the government does not want it, it will vote it down. If members of the committee want to discuss self-reference, if the government does not want it, the government’s people will be told to oppose it. As a result we will only be discussing business which is important to the Labor Party. If this motion is passed today, it is the beginning of “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”,
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