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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 11 Hansard (19 October) . . Page.. 3301 ..

Mr Wood: Let us not go down that track.

MS CARNELL: Excuse me. Ms Tucker has amendments on the table referring this Bill to a committee. We have already offered - - -

Mr Wood: Michael Moore once offered me that choice and I rejected it on good grounds.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Hird): Order, Mr Wood!

Mr Wood: I rejected it on good grounds.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Wood, I call you to order. The Chief Minister has the call.

MS CARNELL: We asked the appropriate committee whether they wanted to look at it and they said no, because it was too big, there were too many pages, and they were, I understood, happy with the process. Any member of this Assembly has had any number of opportunities to offer input on this legislation. That does not mean that the end product necessarily would be supported by all members. But one thing you would not do is refer the Bill to a committee when the committee had already said that it did not want to look at it.

Ms Tucker commented that somehow the explanatory memorandum did not have costings in it. Mr Moore has been here for slightly longer than I have, but I do not think I have ever seen an explanatory memorandum with full costings in it. Maybe there have been once or twice, but I cannot think of them at this time. Legislation and explanatory memorandums do not have costings in them as a regular situation in this place, so that is not unusual. The reality is that a huge amount of time and effort have gone into this legislation. There has been a huge amount of consultation and there has been a very long gestation period, longer than many of us would have liked, but we believe very definitely that everybody should have an opportunity to put something into the Bill, whether it be in the area of indigenous children, interstate transfers, child-care services or the reasonably controversial issue of therapeutic detention or whatever we are calling it.

These things have been put in place to ensure that the rights of the child are paramount and that children in our community are appropriately protected. That is what the whole Bill is about. After such an extended and thoroughly monitored gestation period, I am confident that the community is well and truly ready for its arrival. This Assembly can be confident in passing this legislation that the community has had every opportunity to offer input on this important piece of legislation.

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