Page 479 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 June 1989
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(i) the responsibility for future electoral arrangements;
(ii) the size and structure of the ACT Legislative Assembly;
(iii) the size of the Executive; and
(iv) the role and powers of the Governor-General.
(2) The committee shall report on the first sitting day of 1990.
(3) The committee shall consist of 5 members.
(4) A majority of members constitutes a quorum of the committee.
(5) The committee be provided with necessary staff, facilities and resources.
(6) 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.
I propose to the house an inquiry into self-government in the ACT. This inquiry will review the experience so far in respect of the financial and electoral arrangements imposed on the people of the ACT and will recommend the most appropriate form into which the government of this Territory ought to evolve. It will also review the powers retained by the Commonwealth and those of the head of state, the Governor-General.
We, the No Self Government Party, believe that it is absolutely essential that the arrangements imposed on us by the Commonwealth Parliament, without consultation with the people of the ACT, be a matter of the most immediate scrutiny so that the glaring inadequacies evidenced in these arrangements can begin to be rectified. We are the most imminent danger, through the passage of time, of appearing to accede to the most punitive and unjust arrangements any fledgling colony, State or Territory of Australia has had imposed upon it in the history of this country.
I do not have to remind members of the hothouse gestation our "constitution" had in the Senate, of the last-minute amendments, deals and compromises that characterised the legislation, nor of the electoral system now described by the Electoral Commission as requiring at least two months to count, allowing up to 139 voting choices, which if all electors had exercised their option would have required some 20 million preferences to be noted. The system is regarded by the rest of Australia as a laughing-stock.
Nor do I have to remind members of the debacle at the Premiers Conference, where the Commonwealth repudiated an agreement less than six months old which had been reaffirmed by the Prime Minister just days before our election. It is vital that we begin the job of rectifying the wrong so clearly perceived by the people of the ACT in this new experience of self-government.
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