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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (2 March) . . Page.. 493 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

inquiries, many of which are generated by the Government, in relation to variations to the Territory Plan. Mr Speaker, I move the amendment circulated in my name which reads as follows:

Omit all words after "That", substitute the following words:

"(1) a Select Committee on Utilities be appointed to examine the Utilities Bill 2000 and the Utilities (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2000;

(2) the Committee be composed of:

(a) one member nominated by the Government;

(b) one member nominated by the Opposition;

(c) one member to be nominated by either the Independent Members or ACT Greens

to be notified in writing to the Speaker by 4.00 p.m. today, 3 March 2000;

(3) the Committee report by first sitting day of June 2000;

(4) on the Committee presenting its report to the Assembly, resumption of debate on the question "That this Bill be agreed to in principle" for each of the Bills considered in the report, be set down as an order of the day for the next sitting; and

(5) the foregoing provisions of this resolution have effect notwithstanding anything contained in the standing orders.".

MR KAINE (11.29): I support the referral of this quite complex legislation to a committee of the Assembly. I think it needs to be examined in detail before it is passed into law by this place. Having said that, however, I am concerned that by simply referring it to a committee and not putting a report date on it one could almost think that this was being shelved; that it does not matter how long it takes it to respond, whether it is December or January next year or even later before we get this thing back. I believe that the legislation in itself is important legislation and it has an element of urgency about it. We should have, in fact, a fairly short report date rather than leaving it open.

Reference has already been made to the fact that this referral will set back other work on the committee's agenda. Well, perhaps it should because of the importance of it to the community. It does not concern me that a referral of a matter like this to a committee may displace other inquiries that a committee has on its plate if those inquiries are less important and less urgent. So it does not bother me in the slightest, but I do think it ought to be given some priority and not just left as a referral without a report date. Although I do not support the amendment put forward by Mr Corbell, at least it does attempt to set a fairly short time scale for the inquiry, and I think we should have regard for that.

They say this legislation has some degree of urgency to it because of its intrinsic importance. I believe that this sort of legislation is long overdue. We should have had it years ago. I think it is unacceptable to just let it hang. But it has an additional urgency attached to it in today's circumstances because there is a proposal before the Government and pending before this house to deal with the future of ACTEW. One might suspect that perhaps this is intended to slow that process down rather than deal with it, and I can see the next step - that we cannot debate the proposed legislation in connection with the merger or the joint venture of ACTEW because the regulatory legislation is not in place. You can see it now. That might be an acceptable ploy politically if the interests of the community were not at stake.

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