Page 62 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 27 November 2012
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We do not think that this government are at all genuine in their efforts to be collaborative or cooperative in how they manage the committees that they chair. Indeed we do not think that their efforts to put two members on PAC are part of an effort to be collaborative; they are an attempt to scuttle PAC from doing its job. If the government are so certain that four members on the PAC is the right thing to do, you would think the government would support four members on the other committees as well.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations and Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development) (12.21): You can see the hurried nature of this proposition from Mr Coe. He has made an error in relation to the first part of his motion, which is to omit paragraph 4(a)(iii), which is actually omitting the government chairing the Standing Committee on Education, Training and Youth Affairs. He is actually saying that the opposition will have three members on the Standing Committee on Education, Training and Youth Affairs. It would read, if Mr Coe’s amendment was supported—
MADAM SPEAKER: Order, Mr Corbell! Mr Corbell, this matter has been discussed and we agreed that we would agree with the amendment.
MR CORBELL: I beg your pardon?
MADAM SPEAKER: We agreed that that would be amended.
MR CORBELL: I beg your pardon?
MADAM SPEAKER: We discussed at the outset, Mr Corbell, when Mr Coe moved this amendment, that that was a typographical error, a writing error, and that we would take it as amended.
MR CORBELL: I beg your pardon, Madam Speaker. I did not hear that part of the debate. Thank you for clarifying that matter, Madam Speaker. I appreciate it.
The issue really is that there is no good faith on the part of the opposition in relation to these amendments, because they are not asking that the justice committee be a four-member committee. They are saying that the justice committee should be a three-member committee, and that they chair it.
So there is no good faith on the part of those opposite. They are not even mouthing a consistent argument in their amendment, let alone the argument they have just mounted about why there should not be four members of the PAC. So there is no good faith from the opposition on any of these matters. They are not prepared to say that the justice committee should be four members.
They are not prepared to say that the justice committee should be four members. They want every other committee to be four members, but not the justice committee, which is presumably the one that Mr Seselja is going to chair, Madam Speaker. So I think that highlights the lack of good faith that they demonstrate.
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