Page 5587 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 November 2011

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Election Commitments Costing Bill 2011—exposure draft

Reference to select committee

MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (4.55), by leave: I move the amended motion standing in my name:

That:

(1) pursuant to standing order 214, the exposure draft of the Election Commitments Costing Bill 2011, tabled on 10 March 2011, be referred to a select committee for inquiry and report by the last sitting day in March 2012;

(2) the committee shall be composed of:

(a) the Treasurer;

(b) one Member nominated by the Crossbench; and

(3) nominations must be provided to the Speaker by the end of this sitting day; and

(4) appropriate resources from the Government and Parliamentary Counsel be provided to assist the committee in the inquiry.

I will speak to the reason for the amendment to the motion first. Basically the original motion on the notice paper had “4 pm” in (3). Obviously we have passed 4 pm. So I needed to change that to “the end of this sitting day”.

On the motion itself, members will recall that I moved a very similar motion on this issue some months ago. Today’s motion to refer the Election Commitments Costing Bill 2011 to a committee is revised from that previous motion in that it proposes the creation of a select committee that includes the Treasurer and a member nominated by the opposition and a member nominated by the crossbench. As I set out in my comments on the previous motion, this initiative is about the ongoing evolution of the committee process.

As members will be aware, there are a number of initiatives within the parliamentary agreement that seek to make the committees more collaborative and develop the way we use the committees in this Assembly. Members will also be aware that those proposals did raise a number of concerns and given those concerns, today’s motion represents an alternative initiative that has been used in other jurisdictions and is one that we believe will help improve our legislative process here in the ACT.

Members will recall that some time ago all members received a letter from the Speaker regarding the proposal for the Assembly committees to meet collaboratively with the executive to progress legislation in the Assembly. The letter included a paper prepared by the Secretariat providing some information on other jurisdictions,

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