Page 1804 - Week 06 - Thursday, 9 May 2013
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
It is a mockery to say that ministers are that busy. But if they are, why has Katy Gallagher not appointed a sixth minister? There is nothing stopping her. She has got someone on her backbench, Dr Bourke, who has been a minister before, and he was squeezed out to make room for Shane Rattenbury, the Green, as part of the deal to get government. But she could enact that; we would support her doing that. My predecessor, Zed Seselja, said he would. I said I would. She could have a sixth minister right now, so what is stopping her? She could share that workload. That is something she could do right now without doubling the number of parliamentarians in this place.
The Chief Minister is also concerned about the other work parliamentarians do. But we have a situation at the moment where we have four members on each committee. We could go to three, and doing so would actually make committees work more effectively. Three members on a committee would enable decisions to be made. We would share the balance of chairs between the two major parties, and we would make sure we had a result. The situation that is clearly emerging at the moment is that when you have two from each political party, committees become deadlocked. Essentially we have six members sitting on committees doing very little other than deadlocking committees. So there is another reform that we could have right now to free up members and actually make this place more effective and more efficient.
You have also got to pay some attention to what this will cost the community, because doubling the size of the Assembly in my estimation—based on what the reference group said about an increase to 25 and if you expanded that to 35—based on the facilities required, the salaries of parliamentarians and their staff and other resources, that could be an election commitment of somewhere between $60 million and $70 million. Is that where the public see $60 million to $70 million of their money being used most effectively and the most efficiently?
Mr Seselja yesterday introduced a piece of legislation to provide a fifth Supreme Court judge. As we all know, there are extensive delays in our court system, whether you are waiting for your day in court, whether you are a victim of crime, or whether there are multi-million dollar issues to be resolved in the court, as we know there are. These are issues that affect our community and that they are concerned about. But when this was raised by Mr Seselja, Katy Gallagher said on radio that, “We don’t just necessarily say that we’ve got a whole load of money to give you just because you’re under pressure. I understand the courts are different, they are not departments of the government, but it is a pretty routine ask that you look at efficiencies and make sure you are doing what you can with the resources available before you inject more funds in.”
Now, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. She is saying to the courts, “No, you’re not getting a single new judge. You’ve got to become more effective. You’ve got to become more efficient,” but then she says of the Assembly, “Well, let’s double the number of politicians.” I do not understand that juxtaposition. I just do not understand how you could walk those two paths at the same time with any credibility. And, of course, you cannot. It makes a mockery and a nonsense of it.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video