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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3817 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

the government itself ought to be undertaking. It ought not to be imposing this sort of a workload on a committee of this place. Even if the committees were not already overworked, the government ought not to be imposing it because it is inappropriate that a committee of this place look into a matter of this magnitude, particularly with the national and other ramifications.

What would be the outcome if the committee took on this inquiry that the minister thinks it should take on and brought down a comprehensive report which impacts upon things that are outside the jurisdiction of this place and in the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth? What would be the effect of it? Absolutely none. But the minister would have wasted the resources of the committee for months in undertaking such an inquiry.

I think that the government has to seriously consider where its responsibilities begin and end before it starts to impose on the committees of this assembly a workload of this kind, both in terms of its nature and its magnitude. I believe that it is inappropriate that the minister should be seeking to impose this inquiry on a committee, particularly when the chair of the committee has already indicated to him the difficulties that such an inquiry would create. The minister chooses to ignore that and go ahead in an arrogant fashion anyway.

Mr Speaker, I do not support this motion. Frankly, I think that the minister should withdraw it and not put us through the process of having to debate it, but we will waste a lot of our time today debating it because the minister and the executive cannot determine the difference between what is their responsibility and what is our responsibility. It is about time they woke up to what their responsibility is and where the boundaries lie. If they do not understand, maybe they should be talking to somebody who can explain it to them.

I do not believe that this is a matter that ought to be foisted upon a committee in this place. I urge the members of this Assembly to vote against this motion and put the responsibility right back where it belongs - in the lap of the minister. He should be coming to us with the outcome of his inquiries for our consideration, not the other way round. I think I have said enough, Mr Speaker.

MS TUCKER (11.32): The last comments of Mr Kaine were interesting. He suggested that the government should bring its own analysis of this situation to the Assembly for us to look at. In fact, I recall that we were told that the government would be doing that. I recall that the government said that it had developed a strategy when this issue was raised some time ago in general discussion in some committee forum, but I cannot recall the exact time.

When the committee received the request from the minister to do the work it was obvious to me that there was no strategy at all. The committee considered that request and decided that it was appropriate for the government to do that work. It was not a priority for our committee. We have lots of demands on us. There are other inquiries which we have been asked to do and which I do not believe we will be able to do in the time left anyway.

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