Page 4633 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 19 October 2011
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federal parliament will look at this and say: “We’re done. We’re done now with the self-government act for a long time.” That will be the attitude, and that is the attitude of those on the hill. They have looked at this and they have said, “This is all you’re getting.” I think that is why it is actually counterproductive to those who believe that, after 20-plus years of self-government, it is time that we had a look at all of those other issues.
Dr Bourke talked about the ability to choose the size of the Assembly. This does not do that. I do not know if he has read the legislation but it does not do that. It does not allow for that. It simply changes the procedure for if and when the legislation of the ACT should be overridden by the commonwealth.
We see the sad spectacle today of a once-proud Labor Party just begging at the Greens’ table, begging the federal parliament to give a unanimous level of support to a Greens bill, because the Labor Party could not get it done. They could not get it done. They could not get a review. We will not be able to determine our own size.
The Chief Minister claims that she wants more ministers. That is the main game—that we should be able to choose the size of the Assembly, increase the size of the Assembly, so that she can have more ministers. And she is so keen to have more ministers that she has chosen to make do with four instead of five. Let us just consider that for a second, Madam Deputy Speaker. This Chief Minister has said to us on numerous occasions: “We don’t have enough ministers. We’re overworked. There’s too much for us to do.” So much so, that she has chosen to have one less minister than she used to have. She has chosen to make do with four ministers.
Perhaps in this motion today we get a clue as to why that is. Perhaps today in this motion we get a clue as to why she is making do with four ministers, because this government are lacking the ability to even make up the numbers of those four. They are lacking the ability to even make up four competent ministers, as we saw yesterday, where they had to desperately hold on and defend the indefensible in relation to Ms Burch. They defend the indefensible because they are not prepared to go to their backbench. The Chief Minister does not believe that her backbench is up to the job. And we see an example of it today. We see why I think that is the case.
We continue to believe that these things should not be looked at in isolation. We continue to believe that if you are going to make changes to what is the constitution of the ACT, two things should happen. Firstly, you should do it properly and you should do it comprehensively, not in this piecemeal, Greens-led way that we are seeing the Labor Party backing. Secondly, you should do it in consultation with the community. I think it is reasonable, if you are going to change the community’s constitution, that you might want to actually consult with them about it, not just on questions that are before the federal parliament at the moment but on the broader question.
There is no doubt that through the Greens’ grandstanding we will, as a result of this, see the federal parliament move on, and for many years we will not see any other changes to the self-government act—changes that I think should occur, but that should occur in genuine consultation with the community.
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