Page 1186 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 May 2006
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Seven Liberal members, three Labor members and one crossbencher are actually able to sit on this committee and, based on that, you would properly have three or four Liberal members, one or two government members and one crossbench member if you wanted to get the ratio proportional. Not only can Mr Corbell not do the maths, but also what he is doing and what the government is doing here is setting up a lame duck committee.
This is actually a committee that might not get past its first meeting because, if this amendment gets up, six members will meet to elect a chair and, if there are three members in favour of one chair and there are three members in favour of another chair, there will be no chair because the vote will be negated. It will be a draw. It will be a hung committee from day one. That is what Simon Corbell and Jon Stanhope want. They want a hung committee or they want a committee that only they can control.
They are afraid. They want a hung committee right from the start. They want a committee that will only print as a report what the government wants in it. They are ensuring that there will be dissenting reports. They may be ensuring that there will not be a committee report at all because things may get to the situation where the chair, if a chair is elected, presents a report that half of the committee might not agree to at all and the vote will be that the committee not table a report. That is what this government is after. It is after the total stifling of debate about the disastrous budget that it is about to bring down.
We need to assert this Assembly’s independence. It is an Assembly committee, not a committee of the government. We want primacy of the Assembly over the executive. They do not want that. This is rule by the executive. This is going back to Prince John, who we know took over command in England in the 12th or 13th century.
Mr Stefaniak: Before Magna Carta.
MR SMYTH: Before Magna Carta. That is where we are going back to. This amendment is asserting the primacy of the executive, not the parliament. I do hope that the Chief Minister will join in this debate and explain how that is compatible with everything in which he believes. This amendment suffers from an immense lack of credibility and shows an immense amount of fear in the government that they will be scrutinised properly by the committee. The Labor Party is always talking about the principles of fairness and equity. What is fair about this amendment? What is fair about it for the people of the ACT that the Labor Party want to stifle an inquiry that looks at their budget? What are they afraid of? All this amendment does is guarantee that we will have a joke of an estimates committee.
Mr Speaker, you and Mr Stefaniak have been here the longest and both of you have worked very hard to establish the credibility of this Assembly. This amendment will see this Assembly being ridiculed round the country over the leadership of Jon Stanhope and his Labor government and their lack of openness and accountability. It will see people looking at us, scratching their heads and saying; “Why do we bother to pay them when they are afraid to be open to scrutiny by the Assembly?”
I think that this is a terrible move. Yet again it confirms the need for the release of the Costello report. Clearly, what is in the Costello report is to be feared and what is in their
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