Page 2695 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 2013
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country—is manage to work together. The Greens and the sort of property developer members of a council often do find common ground by actually seeking to work together because they go into it with that attitude.
When it comes to performing the scrutiny functions that Mr Hanson has spoken about in detail today, I think the committees still have the ability to do that. It begs the question: what is scrutiny? Scrutiny is the ability to call witnesses, to debate the issues, to ask the hard questions and then to write a report reflecting that. They are all the things that a committee would do to scrutinise—not all of the things but that is the essence of what a committee does. I am sure we could name one or two other things. They are the things a committee seeks to do. There is no barrier to a four-member committee doing any of those things.
We have just seen over the estimates process Mr Hanson write exactly the report he wanted. He brought it to this chamber, put it out in the public and made all sorts of outlandish claims around it in fact. But he has been able to write exactly the report he wanted to. The estimates process has not had any barriers to the scrutiny that the Liberal Party wanted to operate in the budget process.
Mr Hanson: That is not true, and I will explain it to you. That is not true.
MR RATTENBURY: I am happy for you to outline it, Mr Hanson.
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Order, Mr Hanson! Mr Rattenbury has the floor.
MR RATTENBURY: I am happy for Mr Hanson to actually put on the table some very specific problems that he might have but this is where we also need to look at the other mechanisms that operate in this place, because there are other options around this. The first is that if a committee finds itself deadlocked, it can always bring the matter back to the Assembly. If we take the scenario where the Liberal members of the committee wanted to inquire into something and the Labor Party members did not want to inquire into it, because the committees do have that self-referral power, there is nothing to stop the Liberal Party members bringing a motion to the floor of the Assembly seeking to start that committee. Nothing stops them, nothing at all.
As it happens, I then had the casting vote on that committee. I may or may not choose to support that, but that does not matter. That is not the point. The point is that if they wish, they can seek to establish a committee and the membership of the committee does not block them from doing that.
If there are other issues of specific concern—and I think the estimates process has thrown up some challenges—it may be we need to think about the standing orders to see whether there are some procedural issues we need to deal with in light of having four-member committees, the two and two split, because this is the first time this Assembly has done this. But this Assembly very often does things for the first time, does them in a different way. It has somehow been the very culture of this place. One might speculate on why that is, but it has always been the tradition of this place that some things are done in new ways.
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