Page 1401 - Week 04 - Thursday, 12 April 2018

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(6) the Committee shall be composed of:

(a) one member nominated by the Government; and

(b) one member nominated by the Opposition; and

to be notified to the Speaker by 4pm Thursday, 12 April 2018.”.

This is a revised amendment because, as many members would be aware, we have spent quite a lot of time on this issue, both in the chamber and outside the chamber. As I came down I was making a mental note that this is one of the things that we should do in terms of changing standing orders. The idea of privilege motions getting precedence does not work, because it means we all come in here, we are all sitting here, and then we have something to debate where we have no idea what we are talking about. While some people may regard that as the normal state of affairs, it is not normally quite this bad. While it is an aside to this particular issue, it is something that I think we need to look at from the point of view of the standing orders.

Going to the matter at hand, this is a serious issue, but I do not think it is a serious issue in relation to rates. Mr Coe this morning spoke at length about issues to deal with rates. I am not going to talk about that, because I do not think that that is what this motion is about. This motion is about the conduct of an Assembly inquiry and whether there were any breaches of standing orders. Admittedly, the Assembly inquiry was about rates and land tax, but we would be having the same discussion if it was about anything else.

I have had a look at the letter that Miss Candice Burch and Ms Lee circulated. I am not quite sure how widely it was circulated, because I have talked to a number of people who are in their electorate and have not received it. Nonetheless, I assume it was reasonably widely circulated, for the purposes of this discussion. There is only one paragraph in this that I feel anyone could take exception to. It is clearly the work of the opposition to talk about things that they think they disagree with the government on. That is clearly fine. And telling people that the public accounts committee is calling for submissions into a public inquiry is a good thing to do. This is something where, as MLAs, we should all draw people’s attention to inquiries that they might be interested in.

However, where I feel that it is arguable that they have overstepped the line is the second-last paragraph, in which they say:

If you are an owner or a tenant or just think this is unfair, we encourage you to make a submission to the inquiry at haveyoursay.net.au/strata. Submissions do not have to be long, and can simply outline how higher rates and taxes have negatively impacted you or your family.

The issue there is where they are suggesting the submissions go to. That is not in fact an ACT Legislative Assembly website. It is not even an ACT government website, although I imagine quite a few people might think it is, because, as I am sure members are all aware, the ACT government does have a yoursay.act.gov.au website. I assume the fact that the names of these two websites are very similar is not a

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