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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2559 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

Mr Speaker, I do not believe that this is a motion about a non-adversarial system. When I heard the Greens on radio the other day it was all about staffing. That is where it started. I remember the report we got - Mr Berry will remember it - after the last election when people were fronting up and saying, "Who is going to be the Government? What groups will get together? Where will support come from?". The approach from the Greens was, "What staffing do we get? What extra staffing can we have?". I do not think that has changed in all this time and it is what is driving this now. I think that is a reasonable approach if you want to do it that way. If you put out the concept that you are philosophically minded and pure and holy like the Greens, you would have thought they would have come to us and started talking about where policies melded and where their policies might be better in tune with one group or another. But that did not happen. It was all about staffing, and I do not think that has changed. I think that is fair enough, as I said.

When Ms Tucker responds she will not stand up here and say, "I do not want to expand the influence of the Greens party". Of course she does. She wants more support from the community. She wants to win more votes in the next election. She wants to have more members in this Assembly, just as the Labor Party does, just as the Liberals do and just as the other crossbenchers do, and that is legitimate. In order to do that they want more staff than they have now, and that is legitimate. I do not complain about it, but I do complain about this pious patting on the back and saying, "We are for non-adversarial systems; we are for peace, harmony and all those things" as the perceived reason for changes. Let us understand exactly what it is about and let us do away with any pious nonsense that suggests otherwise.

MR MOORE (5.05): Mr Speaker, I rise to support Ms Tucker's motion. Indeed, after a little bit of a run around the Assembly, we have agreed that Mr Berry's request not to adjourn the motion is reasonable. I must say that, if the motion is lost today, I will be quite happy to support its being brought on again, should it be necessary. Mr Speaker, it seems to me that Ms Tucker put a cogent and sensible case that it is inappropriate for us to have in this Assembly the position of Leader of the Opposition, let alone that of Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the way the standing orders currently exist.

Do not forget, Mr Speaker, that the standing orders have changed a couple of times. When we first came into this Assembly, in 1989, there was no such thing as a Leader of the Opposition. We then went through a process whereby we established a Leader of the Opposition, who was voted for by non-government members of the Assembly. At one stage, after the fall of the Alliance Government, that delivered a Leader of the Opposition who was not from one of the major parties. The result of that, Mr Speaker, was a change in the standing orders brought about by a combination of the two major parties. The combination of the two major parties in getting what they wanted to run a particular system resulted in the standing orders that currently exist.

Ms Tucker read from House of Representatives Practice showing what an opposition should do. The reality, to any observer for the last 21/2 years, is that those tasks are done by the crossbenches at least as well as, and probably better than, they are by what is called the official Opposition.

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