Page 410 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 21 February 1990
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relating to any Bill, motion, or other public matter connected with the business of the Assembly, of which the member has charge.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Whalan, the practice is that the scope of questions allowed to committee chairmen is very limited.
Ms Maher: I can answer the question, to a certain degree.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Moore, given the ruling on your question, you may like to ask another question.
Mr Whalan: On a point of order; Ms Maher has indicated her willingness to answer the question. She does not need to be protected by you and the other chauvinists.
Mr Humphries: On point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker; I refer you to standing order 117(e)(ii) which states that questions shall not refer to proceedings in committee not reported to the Assembly. This clearly is such a matter. Irrespective of whether Ms Maher wishes to answer the question, it would be against the terms of standing orders to have such a question answered.
Mr Whalan: On a further point of order; to the best of our information, this matter is not before the committee because the committee has not taken the initiative of examining the matter. So, quite clearly, it is outside the scope of that standing order. I ask you to rule accordingly.
MS MAHER: The matter is with Professor Whalan who is an adviser to the Bills scrutiny committee. At the moment he has the documentation and is looking it over in the normal procedure and will be reporting back to us. So we are in the process of having some work done on the particular legislation to which Mr Moore referred; we are acting on it.
Health Promotion
MR STEVENSON: My question is directed to the Minister for Health, Education and the Arts. Given that in April 1988 the World Health Organisation indicated that $20 billion is being spent on preventable diseases and that $6 billion of that is spent on malnutrition, would the Minister please indicate what steps are being taken in the ACT to encourage a healthy lifestyle, particularly with reference to sensible eating habits.
MR HUMPHRIES: I thank Mr Stevenson for his question. It is certainly the case, as he pointed out, that a grossly insufficient amount of health budgets, not just in this country but also around the world, is spent on preventive rather than curative procedures. It is very sad that we
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