Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .
Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2386 ..
MR WHITECROSS (continuing):
Minister responsible for trading hours. Since this Government came to office, he has been the Minister responsible for it. He is the Minister for Business; he is the Minister for Regulatory Reform. He is clearly the Minister whose views we need to hear tonight, and he is not here to give them. I do not think that is good enough, and for that reason I think we should support Mr Berry's motion.
MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, I seek leave of the Assembly to make a very short explanatory statement to clarify the issue that Mrs Carnell raised of the mental health legislation being referred to a committee. It will take me three or four minutes at the most.
Leave granted.
MR MOORE: Thank you, members, for your indulgence. I have checked the minutes. The original reference to the Social Policy Standing Committee was the Mental Welfare Exposure Draft Bill and the Crimes (Amendment) Exposure Draft Bill. I like the way that Mrs Carnell tried to present it. Mrs Carnell was on that committee with me and Ms Ellis, who has been promoted to much higher things. We very carefully considered an exposure draft. We went through a long process of considering an exposure draft which eventually became legislation. Our report said that the legislation should have a sunset clause and that the Social Policy Committee or whatever replaced it - it is still the Social Policy Committee - should monitor the legislation to check it and assess it and to see how it goes. Mrs Carnell suggested that the situation here is similar; that the two are similar. They are not.
Mrs Carnell: They are, exactly.
MR MOORE: They are not at all, Mrs Carnell, and you know it. You tried to misrepresent the situation. This Bill has not been through an Assembly committee before. It is not a case of just having an Assembly committee monitor a piece of legislation that has been carefully thought through. You are not talking about monitoring a piece of legislation, although that may be part of the role of the committee, if indeed you are silly enough to proceed with this. The reality is that in that situation we had gone through an appropriate community consultation process and hence the committee was not brought into disrepute. In this case we are talking about a community consultation process that does need to be done appropriately. Mr Speaker, we should ensure that when we are suggesting things to the Assembly we do not misrepresent them in the way Mrs Carnell did and bring Assembly committees into disrepute.
MS TUCKER: I seek leave to speak on this matter.
Leave granted.
MS TUCKER: Yes, of course we take community consultation seriously. Mr Moore was very kind to remind me of our commitment to that, but he did not need to. We have had a lot of consultation in the development of our policies. We did develop a policy which accepted the necessity for some regulation of trading hours. We also had a very good consultative report - - -
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .