Page 3305 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 12 October 1993
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MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, I will look at it in the way that we do business. I will always look at these things. I am not sure that the situation is as serious as claimed. I think that members of this Assembly are more aware of what is in the plan than most people. I do find it a little difficult to accept now comments from the community about what is and is not in the plan, what it says, and the requirements that are now being imposed, because it really has had such a run. At the same time, I acknowledge that if you are flat out earning a crust in the prefabricated garage business, as elsewhere, you do not have time to keep on top of these things. As Mr Kaine asked, I will have a look at the problem.
Self-Government Legislation
MR STEVENSON: My question is to the Chief Minister. I refer to the Commonwealth Arts, Environment and Territories Legislation (Amendment) Bill 1993, which resulted from a 1992 review by the department and the ACT Administration. A further review is now on, according to Queensland Liberal senator, Ian Macdonald. On 1 September the senator understood that the current review was being done behind closed doors between the department and the minority administration in this Assembly, and that neither the other major party nor the Independents were consulted, nor the wider community. The senator asked how the ACT Government could expect support for important changes to the Constitution of the Australian Capital Territory if it consults only with its own mates as to how the Constitution should be changed. Will the Chief Minister, from behind closed doors if she must, tell the Assembly and the wider community what further constitutional changes are contemplated, and what unpublished changes have already been made to the ACT's Constitution by the Arts, Environment and Territories (Amendment) Bill 1993?
MS FOLLETT: Madam Speaker, I will do my best with Mr Stevenson's question, which is bizarre in a number of ways. Members might recall that during the course of the First Assembly there was a select committee established - chaired in the first instance, I think, by Mr Kaine and then by Mr Norm Jensen - to look into the question of self-government and a number of aspects of it. That committee reported to the Assembly. At the time that it reported there had been a change of government and Mr Kaine was the Chief Minister. The committee recommended a number of changes to be made to our regime of self-government, broadly in order to make the Assembly more responsible, more accountable, for its own actions. It included things like handing over to the Assembly control over the sitting pattern, for instance, control over the number of members of this Assembly, and a range of other matters, some of which were just tidying up matters.
In responding to that report, Mr Kaine, as the leader of the government of the day, accepted all of the recommendations of that committee and undertook to convey them to the Federal Parliament so that the recommendations could be implemented by way of amendment to the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act. Mr Kaine took that action quite properly, and, Madam Speaker, it is a position which I supported. Indeed, the Assembly supported it. It was, in fact, acting upon a report of an Assembly committee.
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