Page 2523 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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raises further concerns. He seems to be expressing the view that once things are removed, once we potentially remove 35(2) and a lot of other powers in the self-government act, we will not replace them with any checks and balances. He seems to be—
Mr Corbell: That is not what I said at all.
MR SESELJA: Well, there was a strong implication—saying that we do not need checks and balances, that a single house in the territory does not need additional checks and balances.
Mr Corbell: No; you are misrepresenting me.
MR SESELJA: I do not think I am. You can clarify what you said, but you can check the record.
It does raise further concerns about this review. This review is going to be done by this government, and presumably Minister Corbell will have a fair bit to do with it. He has expressed scepticism about checks and balances. We can have an argument about the right checks and balances, about whether or not it is appropriate for the Governor-General to be this check. I think there is a general view that this is no longer appropriate. But to say that we will remove that and not replace it with anything? As basic as it might be, even the Northern Territory has an administrator. That might not be seen as much of a check and balance; but there are circumstances where an administrator has a role, and that provides some check. Most states—all states bar Queensland—have an upper house.
I am a big believer in checks and balances. I believe that democracy is very important. I believe that unfettered power is very dangerous and I believe that unrestricted power is very dangerous.
I suppose we need to look back for a moment. What if all of what we have in the self-government act was changed in accordance with the broad views here with nothing to replace it and we had the majority Stanhope government that we had between 2004 and 2008? If there was nothing reasonable to replace it, I would suggest that we would have seen the electoral system change. I would suggest that we would have seen the size of seats changed and the size of the Assembly changed to favour the Labor Party. I think that is what we would have seen.
That is the concern when you do not have checks and balances. We have heard the minister expressing scepticism about the need for checks and balances once some of these changes go through. That is our fundamental concern, particularly when now it is going to be very much in the gift of this government, along with the federal Labor government, to take this review forward.
I move to the point. I think fundamentally there is an undermining of the case in this approach that has been agreed to by the Labor Party and by the Greens. On the one hand, they are saying: “We are a successful parliament; we need to be able to stand on our own two feet. But we are not going to tell you exactly what we want before you
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