Page 3860 - Week 09 - Thursday, 25 August 2011
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I am concerned, and have been concerned for some time, that we have been changing quite significantly over the last three years the processes which apply in this place and I am a little concerned that we may be trying to change things too quickly. I do not suggest that the suggested changes are not valid—not at all. I am just concerned that we might be changing things too quickly and that some of them would have been better off in the next Assembly, trying them for the next Assembly once the changes that we have done now have been bedded down, proven, reviewed and okayed.
So I do not say that necessarily this is a bad idea but I do caution that we are changing things a little too quickly. What happens if you change things too quickly is that people get left behind. And when they get left behind, they do not have a commitment to the new process. What we need to do is make sure that when we have standing orders that are changed, like these, all of us in this chamber are committed to the success of those changes.
That is the only caveat I put on these changes. I commend the motion to the Assembly.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (10.36): I am very pleased to be able to speak to this proposed temporary standing order. As Mr Hargreaves just said, the genesis of this change was a letter that I wrote to the Speaker on 24 August last year, almost exactly a year ago, in which I suggested there was perhaps a hybrid which could be developed between the UK system of portfolio question time and the Australian tradition whereby questions can go to any minister. The reason for this was that often some of the smaller portfolios do not attract the same level of scrutiny in question time.
Whilst I acknowledge that non-executive members are, of course, responsible for the questions that they ask of ministers, the fact is that some portfolios do not have the same time-critical nature or attract the same budget spend that other portfolios do. Therefore, they do not always attract the same level of non-executive member scrutiny as some of the other portfolios. It was to that end that I thought there was scope to have some portfolio-based questions and a time allocated during the sitting week for that.
I am pleased that proposed standing order 113C suggests that on Tuesdays and Wednesdays of each sitting week we will see a portfolio question time, based in part on the UK portfolio question times. I think there are many benefits to this arrangement, including that it would be of great interest, I believe, to external stakeholders of these portfolios. If, for instance, you know that the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Islander Affairs is going to be scrutinised for 15 minutes and there are going to be questions without fail to that minister about which you are concerned it means that you can come to the Assembly or tune in online with some assurance that you are going to get some relevant information on the subject of your choosing.
As to the roster, I do not think the roster completely captures what I was requesting, but it is certainly a step in the right direction. There are still some gaps. For instance, I can think of one or two portfolio areas that may well be under the radar and may not get the same level of scrutiny. Heritage is one which I do not see as being available in
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