Page 465 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 8 March 2011
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21 years. Now, 21 years ago there were around 100,000 less people in this territory. We have a larger population now. Our budget has increased four times over. The level of complexity of what is being dealt with in this place has grown. It has increased. We do need to be able to have an Assembly, a parliament, that is able to grow with those challenging issues into the future.
I do agree that we should have control here in the ACT over the size of the Assembly. But at the same time, I make it very clear that that should not stop everyone in this place from supporting Senator Brown’s bill. Yes, it is only one of the issues, but it is at the moment on the table being debated. I would very much call on all members of this place to be lobbying their federal colleagues to support Senator Brown’s bill. It is a small step forward but it at least is some progress and a step forward while we then work on the issue of how to engage the federal parliament and to ensure those other issues that need to be changed in the self-government act are addressed as well.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (11.21): Mr Speaker, the term “reluctant democrats” has often been coined to describe the journey of the ACT community towards self-government. Indeed, it was the title of a history that was put together a number of years ago about the journey of the territory towards self-determination. I am afraid to say that we still have some reluctant democrats here in the chamber today, and those reluctant democrats are, of course, those on the other side of this house who continue to resist and to shy away from a fundamental debate about how the territory governs itself. They are, indeed, reluctant and, can I even suggest, recalcitrant democrats in this place.
I draw members’ attention to debates in this chamber that have occurred over many years now and, in particular, a debate that occurred in 2006 which was, of course, the year in which the Howard government disallowed—actually vetoed and made null and void—an act of this democratically elected Assembly. That, of course, was the Civil Unions Act. The issue we are debating today and the issue we were debating then was not the substance of the act that was disallowed or, indeed, the substance of acts that could be disallowed. What we were debating was whether or not the Crown could unilaterally act to veto and make null and void an act of a democratically elected parliament.
That is what Senator Brown’s bill is about, and that is what this motion is about today. It is about saying that nowhere in a democratic nation with a form of constitutional government with all of the conventions and norms that have evolved over hundreds of years should there be a place for the Crown—the Queen’s representative—to unilaterally and without reference to parliament override an act of a democratically elected parliament, because that is what this particular section of the self-government act provides for.
Section 35 allows the Crown, acting on the advice of her ministers, to overturn the act of another parliament. That is what the provision does, and it is a fundamentally undemocratic provision. It is a provision that has no reference or regard to the views of the commonwealth parliament, let alone the views of this Assembly, which is the
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