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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2552 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

party that goes to an election with its opinion-poll based policies and leadership personnel often has little connection with the party of the same name that contested the previous election.

Take the GST as an example.

Mr Moore: Dead in the water.

MS TUCKER: It was Labor and then it was Liberal, and now it is Liberal again. What your actual policies are just depends on what position you are in. There is very little difference between the policies of the two. I believe it is a very legitimate and valuable point that Mr Moorhouse has raised here, and that is why people in the community are getting so frustrated. The idea that people are wedded to only two forms of government - a Liberal government or a Labor government - is also becoming less and less true. This is shown by the size of the swinging vote and the growing dissatisfaction with both mainstream parties.

Moorhouse concludes, and I agree:

... the evolving role of politicians will be to contribute to a mood of reasoned discourse, not of bipolar conformity characterised by the old party system, but of informed negotiation both within parliament and within the nation.

We see the abolition of the position of Leader of the Opposition as just one step in reforming the Assembly as a whole. I am aware that other members have talked about reforming the Assembly. Before the last election Mrs Carnell said that the Liberals were committed to achieving reforms of the Legislative Assembly that would result in less adversarial and more management-oriented approaches to the administration of the Territory. She often referred to the need to create city council-style government. I am not aware of any councils that have a formal Leader of the Opposition. I have never seen Mrs Carnell spell out what she means by council-style government, and I have not seen a great opening up of the debate either. In fact, I did notice this morning a rather telling interjection from Mrs Carnell. Mr Wood said in debate, "Mrs Carnell is worrying me", and Mrs Carnell interjected, "That is my job - to worry you". I think this is the essence of the debate here. That is what the problem is.

The Greens also raised the need for reform of the Assembly soon after we were elected. In our first budget speech we noted that only four out of 17 members formulated the budget for a Government that has a little over 40 per cent of the members of the whole Assembly. We said that all members of this place should have the opportunity to have much greater input into the budget process. We also raised the point that few, if any, parliaments in the Westminster system have been blessed with a minority government such as ours. I know that Labor do not think it is a blessing to have a minority government and they have said quite clearly that they want to make sure that there is not a minority government next term; but it seems the community does not hold that view. For this reason, little work has been done to create participative processes and systems that ensure that all members have an opportunity to be meaningfully involved.

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