Page 254 - Week 01 - Thursday, 27 February 2014
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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) (10.32): Madam Speaker, I will move the amendment that has been circulated in my name. I would ask for your indulgence. It is entitled “Assembly Business Order of the Day No 1”. In fact it should be “Assembly Business Order of the Day No 2”.
MADAM SPEAKER: Yes, that is one of the things that confused me. Thank you, Mr Corbell.
MR CORBELL: I move:
Add:
“and that the Committee Chair, before the Assembly rises today, table the Chair’s draft and the alternative draft that was considered by the Committee”.
I am moving this amendment today because it is important, given what we now know to be a deliberate political strategy on the part of those opposite, that we properly understand the context in which they are pursuing this within this committee and potentially in other committees. If they feel that they have so much constructive input to put in to Assembly inquiries, and that they are being denied the opportunity to have that voiced in the final committee report, let us see. Let us see what Mr Smyth and Mr Wall proposed to the committee, let us see what the chair proposed to the committee and let us make our own judgements about how the committees are operating.
In my time in this place it has been very clear to me that there have been many instances in the past where there have been four-member committees, and those committees have delivered conclusive reports—often with dissenting reports, but they have delivered conclusive reports.
What has changed, Madam Speaker? I will tell you what has changed. It is very clear that what has changed is that on that side of this chamber they are out to wreck the committee system. They are not interested, as the Chief Minister says, in doing their job. They are not interested in engaging in constructive discussion in committees. They just want to wreck the committee system.
Maybe that is to their benefit because then they have to do less work, and we know how notoriously lazy this Liberal opposition is. But it is time that we saw clearly—it is time that this Assembly saw clearly—exactly what work they are putting in, what they are suggesting and how the committee is dealing with those matters.
This resolution will allow the Assembly to make those judgements. It asks—indeed, it requires—the committee chair, before the Assembly ceases its sitting today, to table the draft report put forward by the chair of the committee and the alternative draft that was considered by the committee. In that way we can reach our own conclusions as to the veracity or otherwise of the claims being made on the other side of the chamber.
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