Page 3352 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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conversations across the club sector and they do wonderful work. To the commissioner for gambling and racing and the staff within the directorate who made these changes and who now see them come to fruition, thank you for the work.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill, as amended, agreed to.
Road Transport (Third-Party Insurance) Amendment Bill 2011
Debate resumed from 17 February 2011, on motion by Mr Corbell, on behalf of Ms Gallagher:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (11.15): This bill was presented by the former Treasurer, Ms Gallagher, in February 2011. Fortunately at that time the Assembly recognised that this bill was premature given that the CTP reform bill of 2008 only came into force on 1 October 2008 and had a review clause in it. The Assembly asked the public accounts committee to inquire into this bill, and you will all recall that this inquiry was delayed while the government complied with the review requirements included in the act. Despite the disingenuous comments put out by Minister Barr about it being delayed by the Liberal Party, the true delays, of course, came about when, in complying with the law, Minister Barr took six months, despite the former Minister for Transport saying they would knock the review off in perhaps a month, the committee could have it in November and we would pass this bill in December 2011. It is important for the record that people know that any delays in this bill being passed rest fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the minister.
Members will recall that PAC conducted an inquiry and was able to finalise its report in April this year. PAC made a number of recommendations. The key recommendation was recommendation No 10, where PAC recommended that this bill not be supported in its current form. That was, of course, a unanimous report of the public accounts committee. We need to note that the government has now responded to the public accounts committee report. It was circulated out of session but was only tabled this week. Again, if the minister had wanted to deal with this earlier, he could have by ensuring that he had complied with the promises of the former minister, now the Chief Minister.
It is an interesting response. Basically, the minister has agreed to all of the recommendations except for the one saying the bill should not be supported. There is an internal inconsistency in the government’s approach: “Yes, PAC got it right; yes, more work needs to be done; yes, everything that you’ve said is valid, but I don’t care, I’m going ahead.” You have to question the logic of that argument: “The recommendations are supported or will be looked at, but we will blunder on anyway.” It seems a little bizarre that the government has supported all of the report except the key recommendation.
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