Page 501 - Week 02 - Thursday, 25 February 1993
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by April we can have a reasonable report from the Legal Affairs Committee on the major matter it was charged with. They have not even had public hearings on that matter - not that public hearings are necessary for a committee to report. That may be different from what they are doing, but it is a good example of why it is necessary to have an appropriate number of people on a committee to make it work and to spread proportionally the background of those people as far as the committees are concerned.
Ms Szuty and I have made ourselves available to do the extra work on what I think Mr Humphries referred to as the gravy train of committees. Mr Humphries, if you chair a committee and you take money and you have only two or three meetings a year, perhaps you can consider it a gravy train. For the rest of us, it is hard work and we take it very seriously and we really do work at it. Perhaps you can take a lesson from that.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
PERSONAL EXPLANATIONS
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, I seek leave to make an explanation under standing order 46.
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Humphries, you have my leave.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Moore, in a reference to the Standing Committee on Legal Affairs in the debate, suggested that the committee needed an extra member in order to be able to do its work. He had made previous references to that standing committee as well, and I believe that I ought to explain in the Assembly what has occurred with that committee. Members will recall that there was a two-part inquiry originally commissioned for that committee: One part was on the cost of justice and the other was on conveyancing. The Assembly subsequently discharged the inquiry on conveyancing because the Government had already announced initiatives in that area and it was not felt appropriate to continue with that inquiry while the Government was proceeding with its own initiatives.
In the area of the cost of justice, in my opinion and to some extent the opinion of my colleague on the committee, Mr Lamont, that is a somewhat difficult inquiry to conduct while at the same time an inquiry into precisely the same thing - the cost of justice - is going on in the Federal arena. Our committee has made a deliberate decision to wait for some indication from the Federal committee reporting on the cost of justice before it begins to do any work on any ACT implications of that report. That is a reasonable step to have taken. It was taken with the full concurrence of the Labor member on that committee.
I also reject the suggestion coming from Mr Moore's comments that in some way the committee is deadlocked and cannot agree and, as a result, is delaying having any public hearings. Mr Lamont and I have worked extremely well on that committee. We have had no disagreement, that I can recall, on any matters of any substance, and I think it is quite unfair to suggest that Mr Moore is required to break some kind of deadlock on that committee between Mr Lamont and me. I reject the assertion as quite unfair.
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