Page 3155 - Week 15 - Thursday, 14 December 1989
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as Mr Wood has indicated, in a fairly unusual fashion and, as a result, there is some experience there which I hope the four members of the former Government will take advantage of as members of those committees in due course. I am not sure what their attitude is going to be to that. I hope they will not sit and sulk on the opposition benches but will participate in the committee system. I have yet to see whether that will be the case.
We have heard a great deal of pontification on the part of Ms Follett and Mr Whalan that there is some difference between what happens in this Assembly, what will happen in this Assembly's committee structure, and what happens elsewhere; that somehow there is some depriving of rights going on. Mr Wood, I think, referred to the fact that there was an all-powerful executive in the Queensland Parliament under Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen and he would hate to see this happen in the context of the ACT. The fact is, Mr Speaker, that during, as I understand it, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen's day, members of the Government held a majority of seats on committees established in the Queensland Parliament. That was generally the case, I understand.
Mr Wood: No; they just did not have committees.
MR HUMPHRIES: Well, all right. They did have some committees, I understand.
Mr Wood: Eventually they formed a public accounts committee.
MR HUMPHRIES: Let us say that those committees that were formed held a majority of Government members, and Mr Wood might have been implying that this was all apparently a feature of the Bjelke-Petersen Government.
The fact is, Mr Speaker, that, in every parliament in this country, on the vast majority of committees established in those parliaments where governments have majorities in the parliaments, the committees reflect that majority. They reflect that majority in every parliament in this country. Ms Follett's colleagues in Queensland now, in South Australia, in Western Australia, in Tasmania and in Victoria all follow that same model. In every one of those parliaments, ALP governments ensure that a majority of members on those committees are ALP members. For her to pretend that some exception or some rort is going on in the ACT is quite hypocritical on her part.
The fact is, Mr Speaker, that we have a system of committees in this Assembly which is, as I said, unique; which is valuable; which we intend to build on in the coming years. We have no intention of jettisoning the great value and productivity of our committees. We intend to build on that. Nothing that appears in this motion is going to jeopardise that progress.
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