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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (14 June) . . Page.. 1716 ..
MR MOORE (continuing):
this Assembly at a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association meeting on Westminster, as did Mr Berry some years earlier. We see it applied differently in every place. We expect it to evolve, and evolve it will.
As part of that evolutionary process in my mind, I proposed quite some years ago a system of what I referred to as binding motions. I put out into the public that we ought to have legislation in place so that when the Assembly passes a motion it has some restrictions on it, but that a binding motion binds the executive to do what the Assembly wishes. At the time the Clerk and Deputy Clerk spent quite some time with me explaining the ramifications of that in terms of the separation of powers. It was following those discussions that I realised the approach I had taken was simply wrong. In my view it interfered with that separation of powers in a way that would create more problems than it would resolve.
What would happen was that a decision would be taken where the responsibility actually lay somewhere else, and that would be inappropriate. For that reason I moved away from that notion of binding motions and did not proceed with it. I put that argument, I think, when Mr Rugendyke indicated that he would be introducing this legislation.
I think this leads to something else that Mr Kaine touched on about how this Assembly should operate and where should we draw the lines. Mr Stanhope touched on it also. I will come to my position in the cabinet. Mr Stanhope is quite right. It does raise the same sorts of issues. We have run into a number of matters that my presence in this cabinet raises.
First, I would like to say that we have made some mistakes in the process, and I have been involved in some of those mistakes. I think the first and the most fundamental of those mistakes, Mr Speaker, was an amendment which you put and which I supported to a budget which affected what Mr Wood had responsibility for in education. It was wrong. We made a fundamental mistake to interfere with that budget package. I see a reiteration of that same mistake in the legislation that Mr Berry tabled this morning. There is a slight difference. I do not suggest there is not.
Mr Stanhope: We are relying on your precedent, you see.
MR MOORE: Indeed, it was a precedent. Mr Stanhope says, "Yes, and we are relying on your precedent." That is why we need to try to codify some of these things and sort out between us what is a precedent. Was it a good precedent? Was it a bad precedent? What are the mistakes that we made? When you are in opposition and you have an opportunity and the precedent is there, of course you will follow it. I am trying to be-
Mr Wood: We will go back and change it. Recommit the vote.
MR MOORE
: You cannot go back and change it. In the same way that Mr Stanhope was careful not to make this a personal matter, I am trying to talk about the principles of this matter. There is a real issue about what is the power of the executive and what is the power of the Assembly, and I think it comes back to the fundamental notion of what the executive takes responsibility for. It may well be that in a few months Mr Wood and Mr Stanhope will be sitting on this side of the house wrestling with these issues as well.
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