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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (22 May) . . Page.. 1626 ..

MR MOORE (3.42): Mr Speaker, I rise to support the suspension of standing orders. As a rule, I am reluctant to bring on private members business at such times. However, there is here an important issue about protection in the recommendations of the select committee report, and I believe that it is appropriate for us to consider this issue. It is a way of dealing with what is essentially a response from the committee to what we are dealing with. It would seem to me to be an appropriate time to take this issue, which has a direct relation to what we are dealing with today, from private members business, where Ms Tucker had correctly given notice, and bring it on to be dealt with as part and parcel of this debate. The alternative we would wind up with is Ms Tucker moving an amendment to the legislation to force the Government to establish this sort of thing as part of legislation. If Mr De Domenico wants this sort of thing as a part of legislation, I suppose that that could be organised too; but it seems to me to be a much more awkward way to go about it. It would be much better to suspend standing orders now and get on with this.

MR KAINE (3.43): Mr Speaker, I oppose the motion. The time for private members business was this morning. There is a great deal of Government business on the agenda. We seem to be getting further and further behind in dealing with that because we spend too much time dealing with extraneous matters. As far as I am aware, the member gave no prior warning to the Government that she intended to bring this matter on this afternoon. I believe that it is an inappropriate use of the time of this Assembly, and I oppose the motion.

MR WOOD (3.44): Mr Speaker, this has caught me by surprise. I had a very brief discussion with Ms Tucker before. I hope that I did not misunderstand things, but we had expected that there would be some variation. There will be an amendment to the legislation. For me, the question is whether we do this now or consider it later. I\ had indicated in my speech that we were likely to be sympathetic to this motion, but now or later is the question we are about to decide.

MR DE DOMENICO (Minister for Urban Services) (3.44): Mr Speaker, the Government will be opposing the motion for one very simple reason. We have got to the stage where we are about to debate a Bill the Government considered and allowed a committee to report on, for heaven's sake. It needs to be passed because it is template legislation that has been passed by every other parliament. All of a sudden, on the floor of the house, before the Bill is going to be debated, and without notice - the Government did not know that this was going to happen - Ms Tucker tries to suspend standing orders in order to bring her motion on. I do not think that is the way we run things in this place. Mr Moore, quite rightly, said that ordinarily he would not allow this to happen.

Mr Moore: Yes, but this is different.

MR DE DOMENICO: It is not different. The principle is that Ms Tucker expects us to drop everything in Government business and go on to private members business. All of a sudden, without any notice, she wants to do something else. That is fine for Ms Tucker, perhaps; but that is not the way things ought to be done. You should perhaps

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