Page 1516 - Week 05 - Friday, 10 May 2019
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past committee recommendations and reports. The unicameral form of this Assembly means that a strong committee system is in the ACT’s interest.
Secondly, I am of the view that there is a need for a stronger provision for capital works oversight in the ACT. There is inadequate reporting, and this needs to change.
Thirdly, the detailed and expert scrutiny of legislation is something that desperately requires more attention. This area of law is highly specialised and requires considerable expertise, and it needs to be resourced appropriately.
Fourthly and finally, how MLAs communicate with their electorate is still very difficult, as everyone here knows. Whilst there are multiple-member electorates we still need to service and represent the full electorate. We do not divvy up the electorate by five. I would expect that the level of awareness and engagement in a single-member electorate is probably higher than in our multi-member electorates. Whilst it is a structural issue, it is also a tangible logistics and resources issue as well. If we are to properly engage with over 80,000 people each, we do have to be resourced appropriately.
The Assembly is a dynamic place. On any given day we can bounce around a dozen issues pretty quickly, especially for new members of this place. We get experiences and opportunities that members of other parliaments could not dream of.
I would like to thank the staff of the Assembly who for over 30 years have served this place with distinction, be they in chamber support, Hansard, the committee office, the library, finance, HR, IT, building services, the Clerk’s office or in education.
I would also like to pay tribute to the unsung heroes of members of the Assembly, and that is MLA staff. We ask each member’s staff to be a speechwriter, a telephone counsellor, an event organiser, an accountant, a lawyer, a drafter, a letter-boxer, an author, a graphic designer and much, much more. They are truly talented people. They are all dedicated, and all past and present members owe these staff a great deal.
A lot of people contribute to making this place tick and, whilst I am yet to experience life on level 2 of this building, as a non-executive member of this place I have been honoured to be here. We are all part of something bigger than ourselves, and everyone comes here to make Canberra even better. We all look forward to strengthening democracy in the years to come.
MR RATTENBURY (Kurrajong) (10.36): It is an honour to speak on behalf of the ACT Greens on this special occasion of the 30th anniversary of self-government in the ACT.
I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we are gathering on today and pay my respects to the many Ngunnawal elders in the room here today, as well as elders past and elders emerging. The Greens acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s long and continuing relationship with the land and water. Their rights and obligations as traditional custodians must be respected. European settlers arrived in the district almost 200 years ago and set up farms over land that had
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