Page 258 - Week 01 - Thursday, 27 February 2014
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MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (10.46): In speaking to the amendment, I think it is important that people know the true story of the committees. I refer to the advice of the Clerk. I will quote the Clerk, and this has been tabled:
An analysis of all general purpose committees established since self government in 1989 reveals that there have been relatively few four member committees. As stated above the most common practice has been for 3 member committees. Prior to the 8th Assembly there have been only four 4 member committees established—the Planning committee in the 3rd Assembly, the Justice and Community Safety Committee in the 4th Assembly and the Community Services and Planning Committees in the 5th Assembly. The reasons for appointing 4 member committees in all of these instances was to accommodate extra cross bench members (Mrs Cross in the 5th Assembly, Mr Kaine in the 4th Assembly and Mr Moore and Ms Horodny in the 3rd Assembly).
That is the point. They were not dominated by any political party. Let us face it: if the government have two members on a committee, they can control what that committee does by voting in the negative to anything that the government do not want.
I think the point that Mr Duncan makes as Clerk in his advice is that it is about non-government control of the committees, because if you have non-government control then you can have oversight. If the government has control or the balance of power then, of course, it will use that to protect the government. That should not be what the committee is about.
There is the official record: relatively few four-member committees. When they were established in the past it was to accommodate an extra crossbencher. We have had ministers on committees before. The standing orders actually say that representatives of each party should be on a committee. Mr Rattenbury gets extra funding so that he can perform a crossbench function when it suits him. But the problem here is that Ms Gallagher’s new era of openness and accountability is not so open and is far less accountable when you have committees that divide on party political lines, and that happens when you have got two government members and two opposition members.
Again, Ms Gallagher very kindly makes my case for me. Instead of fixing the problem, she is going to have “a procedural way to manage this”. The government will now manage the committee system because they have got the numbers in this place. There you have it. In direct violation of the Latimer House principles, the government are now going to manage the process. There you go.
It is interesting that Mick, in his bid to show how onside he was and his qualifications to be a minister, told the truth. He said, “There has been a lot of work done by members of the committee.” Thank you, Mr Gentleman. I acknowledge your praise of all the committee members who did their work. It is interesting when you look at what the Chief Minister said, that somehow we are lazy. Well, we actually produced an alternative report. You might not like the report.
Ms Gallagher: Table it so we can see how hard you work.
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