Page 304 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
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I understand that there will be even more reports now, based on the committee work that is going to be conducted by this Assembly. We are going to have more committee work; therefore, we will need more time in this Assembly to consider those reports in a full and open manner and debate them.
Turning to private members business, it is the only opportunity where the non-executive members of this Assembly get the opportunity to present motions and have a debate on those motions. It is important business of this Assembly. To restrict that to 14 days, as it will turn out, on Wednesdays, is, in my view, insufficient. We have already seen this week that we did not get through private members business. We had five items tabled. We did not get through those. In fact, it was my item, an important issue in health, that we were not able to discuss in the Assembly because there was insufficient time. If we had more weeks—and it goes to the sitting pattern—we would have more opportunity for private members business.
While discussing private members business—we are agreeable to the government’s motion that Tuesdays are the days identified for late sitting—noting that we sat late this Tuesday and will be sitting late again today, I question why we did not sit late last night, at the opposition’s request, so that we could get through the private members business. That was not agreed to by either the government or the crossbench.
I mentioned briefly before a comparison with other parliaments, and I will allude to a couple. This is illustrative if we look at our federal parliamentary colleagues and how much they sit a year. The House of Representatives sits for 18 weeks a year; 14 of those are for four days. So I question why is it that our federal colleagues can sit for that extended period of time but we cannot. I fail to comprehend why that would be.
You should also consider that a lot of our federal parliamentary colleagues have to come from places like Perth, North Queensland, from all over the country. For us, we who live in the city where our Assembly is located—and, for many of us, in the same electorate—it is far easier. Of all the parliaments in the world, I cannot think of anywhere where it would be easier for its members to sit more. But, as it turns out, we are one of the lower-sitting parliaments in the world. Canada, if we look at international examples, sits for three weeks of every month, except for the months of January and August. If Canada can do it, such a vast nation as Canada, why cannot the city of Canberra? It may be that some of our members are stuck so long on the one-lane GDE that that is taken into consideration, but I do not think that that really is quite the excuse that we are looking for.
As an example of what occurred this week, I refer to the motion put forward by Mr Smyth about the appropriation bill that was due to be debated. The idea would be that that would be put to a committee to be scrutinised so that it could then be put back before the Assembly and passed, which is going to be the new order of business. But we could not do that. Why? It was because we do not have enough sitting days. That was the simple answer. So we could not do that. We have to wait until February. We have to wait a couple of months so that the government can go and have a holiday before we can come back and debate that important issue.
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