Page 1053 - Week 03 - Thursday, 26 February 2009
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successful. I think that this is an area where we will have sort of tit-for-tat tabling of amendments and we run the risk, if people do not act with goodwill, of really bogging down the process. It is unnecessary. I think that in the new regime, the new reality in this Assembly, it is entirely unnecessary and that if a minister or any member brings in a big swag of amendments to a bill that they are sponsoring without consultation with other people, they would rightly close us down until there is time to look at it.
That is how it should work and I think that this is an artificial construct that looks to address a problem that no longer exists. Without the support of my amendment we will not be supporting this amendment to the standing orders. I move the amendment circulated in my name:
After “Government”, insert “to its own bill”.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (11.00): I rise this morning to indicate that the Greens will be supporting this motion. It is another initiative to enhance parliamentary scrutiny that has been implemented as a result of the Greens’ success at the last election, and it reflects another clause in the ALP-Greens agreement. It is an agreement, of course, and not an alliance, as members on the other side of the chamber seem to keep harking back to.
I do not plan to speak for very long this morning as many of the arguments supporting these changes have been discussed and canvassed in the Assembly in previous debates around the Latimer House principles and the commitment of the Greens to improve the transparency, accountability and consultative processes of government in the ACT. In particular, the Latimer House principles deal with the relationship between the three branches of government in the Westminster system. The principles specifically state that each institution must exercise responsibility and restraint in the exercise of power within its own constitutional sphere so as to not encroach on the legitimate power vested constitutionally in the other institutions.
Under majority government, the ALP gradually accrued more and more power into the hands of the executive. While ACT Labor was more constrained than the federal Howard government, who showed utter contempt for the proper workings of parliament as soon as they gained a majority in the Senate, over the term of the last Assembly there was a conscious and steady diminution of the roles and capacities of the ACT Assembly to perform its proper function of oversight and review.
This amendment to the standing orders is taken from the agreement, as I previously mentioned, and is further evidence that we are delivering on our commitment to the Canberra community that we will hold the government accountable and, with the cooperation of the Labor Party, we will continue to implement our raft of initiatives that will enhance the quality of governance in the ACT for the term of this Assembly and hopefully into the future.
I might also use this occasion to remind the Liberal Party and again put it on the public record that the Greens-ALP agreement is a public document. There have been a lot of comments and insinuations about the state of that agreement in recent times, but I simply point out that it is available and has been since it was signed. I think that less insinuation and more reflection on the actual document would be helpful for all of us.
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