Page 4829 - Week 15 - Thursday, 8 December 1994
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was not a bad choice. They did not have the opportunity in 1992, and that was not a bad choice. Yet again, they are not going to be given the opportunity to initiate the referendum. They will, once again, just have a choice of what the politicians think they should be allowed to have a say on. I suggest that the major benefits are to members, not to the electorate. That is the difficulty.
So, what I suggest is that, if any eight other members of the Assembly - the Labor eight or the other eight - wish to move for the suspension of so much of the standing orders as would prevent citizens referendum Bills being brought on, I guarantee that I will vote for one of them and that I will make sure, in any amendments that are necessary, that the people of Canberra can have a vote - and a vote at the next election, which would save us a few bob. Apart from that, as there has been no call by citizens of Canberra to have a referendum - no citizen-initiated referendum - I will vote against the legislation today. But members should understand that, straight after that, I will vote for the power of the citizens to call for a referendum on this, if they choose; on the questions that they choose; and, if they choose, to have it brought up at the next election.
MR HUMPHRIES (4.23), in reply: Madam Speaker, I want to respond to a few things that were said by the Chief Minister and by Mr Stevenson in the course of the debate. First of all, let me say that the criticism about haste in the preparation of this Bill needs to be addressed. This Bill depends on two other Acts to operate. It simply cannot operate without those two other Acts. Those Acts are the Electoral (Amendment) Act and the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act, both of which were passed earlier this year - one in May and one just two weeks ago. Madam Speaker, members might say, "I do not understand why that is the case". The simple answer is that this proportional representation Bill relies on the provisions in those other Acts in order to operate the referendum machinery that actually gets a referendum under way. As members will observe, for example, in my Bill there is no reference to a question to be put, to where people can vote on this question that we are putting to them, to who will conduct it, or to anything like that. The simple answer is that those provisions are set out in other legislation.
It was impossible to have brought forward this legislation prior to the passage of both of those other Bills, without having incorporated in this legislation the provisions from those two very thick Bills. Madam Speaker, I could have commissioned my own Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Bill and brought it forward to this place; but I would almost certainly have been prevented from doing so by the Parliamentary Counsel, whose job it is to ensure that there are not two identical matters going forward at the same time. In fact, for the record - the Chief Minister is not here to hear this - I commissioned my legislation as soon as the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Bill was put on the table in the Assembly. The principles that this legislation incorporates were prepared and ready to go at that point. Madam Speaker, it is a tribute to the draftsmen who worked on this legislation that the Bill - a very complex matter - was ready to present in this place on Wednesday of last week.
I defy the Chief Minister, or anybody else, to tell me how it would have been possible to do this job any more quickly. Again, I say to her, "Had she wanted to have this matter exposed for a long period of time, the simple answer would have been for her to have produced her own legislation, on which this was dependent, earlier than she did".
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