Page 454 - Week 02 - Thursday, 11 February 2021
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(3) the Chair of the committee shall be an Opposition Member;
(4) the Committee is to report by the last sitting day in October 2021; and
(5) the foregoing provisions of this resolution, so far as they are inconsistent with the standing orders, have effect notwithstanding anything contained in the standing orders or in the resolution of 2 December 2020.
The motion which has been circulated is to move this debate to a select committee. I thank Mr Pettersson for agreeing to that today because there has been some debate as to what we would do with this bill—should it be going to the health committee; should it be going to the justice committee? If you listened to what Mr Pettersson was saying, I think you would agree that quite a bit of what he said, whether you agree with it or not, sits across a spectrum of health and justice issues. If we are to look at this issue holistically, it would be very difficult to refer it just to a single committee. There was some consideration about whether to send it to both committees. I think that would not have been helpful; that would have been a clunky way of doing it and would have risked some of the important issues being lost through the gaps.
The motion proposes that the committee be composed of one member nominated by the government, one member nominated by the opposition and one member nominated by the Greens, and I would ask that those members be notified to the Speaker in writing by 3 pm. The chair of the committee would be an opposition member and will report on the last sitting day this year with the intention—I have discussed this with Mr Pettersson—that a debate will occur in December, but it will be a matter for whoever is the chair to negotiate any extensions should that be required. I note that paragraph 5 is about the fact that our standing orders now require bills to be automatically sent to a committee, and that that is not required, given that the select committee, hopefully, is going to be established.
This is an important issue and I would like to put on the record that the opposition goes into this with an open mind. Certainly, if we can refer to my words in the debate on the motion that Mr Pettersson raised a couple of months before the election, there is merit in looking at this. Ms Lee has made comments, also, that she remains open to looking at this. I think it is unlikely that the bill that we debate in December will mirror what was tabled today. Indeed, if I refer to Mr Pettersson’s cannabis bill, that changed significantly. I think that there were 30-odd amendments from the government. I think that this is perhaps a better process.
We have all learned from the cannabis bill. Members who were here may recall that at that stage Mr Pettersson did not want it to go to a committee. He did not want it to be looked at and it was, I think, Mr Rattenbury who supported me moving that bill to an inquiry. So it is good that Mr Pettersson has now recognised that there are improvements that can be made to pieces of legislation through the committee process, and I would hope that that is the case today. We welcome it.
It is my understanding, based on my discussions with the Labor Party and the Greens, that they will be supporting this motion. I thank them for that, and I look forward to engaging in that debate. Hopefully, a committee report can value-add to the bill that has been tabled by Mr Pettersson. I am not foreshadowing that important debate and
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