Page 3974 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 16 December 1992
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TEMPORARY ORDER - ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ON NOTICE
MR HUMPHRIES (12.14): I move:
That the following temporary order operate for the remainder of this Assembly:
Answers to questions on notice
118A. If a Minister does not answer a question on notice (including a question taken on notice during questions without notice) asked by a Member, within 30 days of the asking of that question, and does not, within that period, provide to the Member who asked the question an explanation satisfactory to that Member of why an answer has not yet been provided, then:
(a) at the conclusion of questions without notice on any day after that period, the Member may ask the relevant Minister for such an explanation; and
(b) the Member may, at the conclusion of the explanation, move without notice "That the Assembly take note of the explanation"; or
(c) in the event that the Minister does not provide an explanation, the Member may, without notice, move a motion with regard to the Minister's failure to provide either an answer or an explanation.
Madam Speaker, because of the enormous time that the previous very close motion consumed out of private members business, it is unfortunately not possible to resolve this matter today; but I am happy to bring the matter up for debate and see whether we can put the issue squarely on the table so that the Government has a good two months at least to start to lift its game on this important question of the answering of questions on the notice paper.
Madam Speaker, this is an important and significant motion which I believe will improve not only the state of our standing orders but also the quality of our Government. I think we are all very much in favour of that. I do not know whether the Government is, but we are all in favour of improving the quality of the Government. Short of actually changing it, I think the best thing we can do is patch up the holes and use a cattle prod now and again to get a few results.
Mr Kaine: The best they could get was six out of 10.
MR HUMPHRIES: The "six out of 10" Government could do a little bit of improving, and that is why we are going to help it get a better score next year than it got this year. Madam Speaker, we have some concerns about the way in which the Government has delayed the answering of questions which appear on the notice paper. We have considerable concern about the length of time it has taken to answer some questions.
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