Page 44 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 7 December 2004
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unless you are a card-carrying member of the Labor Party. As a result of this motion, this government will set itself up in a way to make everybody else apart from the Labor Party in this territory absolutely and utterly irrelevant.
It will continue to happen unless we of the opposition, with the help of Dr Foskey on the depleted crossbench, continue to make the noise and point out to the community that they are being sold down the river by their majority government. The people in the disability community, the people in public housing and the people interested in planning and the environment have been sold down the river by the establishment of these committees, which are a travesty of the committee system. This committee system will be doing the bidding of the majority Labor government, and it is happening, Mr Speaker, just because they can. And they will continue to say, “We are a majority government. We can do what we like, and the devil can take the hindmost.”
The Liberal opposition will oppose this motion today, and we will continue to oppose the flagrant abuse of power that we are starting to see from the majority Labor government. You may smirk, Mr Speaker, but we are seeing today a departure from what has been happening in what could be called a gentlemanly parliament. It ceases to be a gentlemanly parliament. There is no consensus here today; before committees were brought about by consensus.
Yes, we did not win the election, and you have the spoils of victory. But the government needs to be careful that, in coveting the spoils of victory, it does not do so to the detriment of the community. The community will be made voiceless because of these committees and, as a result, government in this territory will be worse. There will be no scrutiny, there will be no means of holding this government to account or of bringing forward the views of the community because, every time a community member says that they have got a matter of concern, and members of this place think that the matter of concern is worth being investigated, what will happen, Mr Speaker? The government members on a committee will say, “No, we don’t want that to happen. You know, our mate Jon has got us in a half-Nelson and, even if we think it’s a good idea, caucus has told us we can’t do it.”
As a result, there will be no inquiry or collection of evidence. As a result, much of what was brought out in the previous Assembly will be left hidden—for instance, issues relating to the reporting of child abuse in the territory. If the committee system had not worked the way it did in the previous Assembly, those issues may not have been brought to light. We might not now be spending millions of dollars that need to be spent on child abuse reporting and family services in the ACT. Of course, that would save the government a lot of money, but the children would still be at risk—to a much greater extent than they are today. This is why the Liberal opposition will be opposing this motion and this travesty of a committee system.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Minister for Health and Minister for Planning) (11.56): Mr Speaker, the search for relevance begins for those on the other side of the chamber. Over the next four years we are going to hear the mantra “abuse of power”, “abuse of majority government”, et cetera.
Mr Speaker, we have before the Assembly a very reasonable and straightforward proposition. It is reasonable because it outlines very clearly the way in which the
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