Page 826 - Week 03 - Thursday, 14 April 1994
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MR STEVENSON: Mr Lamont comments that the euthanasia policy says that we should not act in advance of public sentiment on euthanasia. If that is the case, I absolutely agree. You did not say that in your statement. Once again, I thought it was an interesting point. I was going to make the point that, if the policy was not a policy as such but depended on public sentiment, that would cover it.
The next point is Mr Moore's preface to the report. Was the comment made there because Mr Moore was not able to make a comment anywhere else in the report, as he was the chairman? I have been informed that, although it would be highly unusual for the chairman to make a dissenting comment or another additional remark or whatever you wish to call it, it could have been done. So from the principle point of view, I thought it was important to mention that Mr Moore could have made his comments elsewhere in the report and would not have been precluded from doing so.
MR MOORE (11.13): Madam Speaker, it is interesting, referring to these additional comments and the motion Mr Lamont has put, that he is not seeking to put additional comments to the report. He is seeking to make comments additional to my own additional comments. Mr Lamont suggested that the notion of the chair writing the preface without the approval of the committee was in some way new. That is simply not the case. I have in front of me six or eight discussion papers and reports of Assembly committees.
Mr Kaine: They are discussion papers, not reports.
MR MOORE: Both. There are reports and a couple of discussion papers that have been published that have prefaces. In about half of those the prefaces were written without reference to the committee until they were published. In this particular instance, there was no opportunity for the members of the committee to dissent from the preface.
Mr Lamont: Yes, there was, and you refused to allow it.
MR MOORE: Mr Lamont in his interjection misunderstands what I am saying: In the cases other than the one we are dealing with now. In the case we are dealing with now, there was no opportunity for the members to dissent from the preface. What we are presented with now is an example of a committee process whereby a member writes a dissenting report, that dissenting report is circulated amongst members, and other members can write a dissenting report on that dissenting report. I heard Mr Connolly before chuckling about this possibility and saying how far it could go. I think he said 97 or 98 times. How many additional comments do we have to the additional comments?
My perception of the preface in each of the reports was that the preface was a place where the chair of the committee could offer opinion. If you look back, for example, at the report on marijuana and other illegal drugs, the chair has offered an opinion. In that case, where I wrote the preface, some of the things I wrote would perhaps have been uncomfortable for other members of the committee; but it was signed by me and done separately. I agree that those comments were not of such a political nature - a matter that has been raised by Mrs Carnell and Mr Lamont - but I believe that I had the right to do that in that preface.
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