Page 4450 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 22 November 2005
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MR SPEAKER: What is your point of order?
Mr Mulcahy: My point of order is: I am speaking against what Mr Corbell is arguing. It is relevant. I think it is relevant.
MR SPEAKER: It is important that we debate the question before us, and that is that the report be noted. It is fair enough to raise passing issues about certain committee members’ behaviour, but we should stick to the subject matter of the question that the report be noted. Yes, you have touched on those issues that concern members’ involvement in it, but I do not think the motion encourages members to rave on for hours about individual members. It would be nice to hear about the report as well.
MRS DUNNE: Whilst taking that on board, I suggest to members that we should vote against the fact that this report be noted because of the behaviour of the member who did not allow sufficient time for the proper scrutiny of this report. The fact that there were two working days, when members have other things to do, to scrutinise this report is inappropriate and shows the haste to do the bidding of the planning minister rather than to properly provide advice to this Assembly, which is what this committee is doing. It is not doing the bidding of the planning minister or the planning department; it is advising this Assembly.
Based on the advice that Mr Seselja has given, I can only come to the conclusion that this advise is not well considered; we should not note this report. It should be sent back and be given proper time to be considered by the planning and environment committee in a way that does the bidding of the Assembly, not the bidding of the planning minister.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Minister for Health and Minister for Planning) (5.42): The government will respond to this report in a considered way in due course, and I will try not to pre-empt the government’s consideration of the report’s recommendations. But I do want to make a point about the conduct of the committee in the preparation of this report.
The assertion made by Mrs Dunne that in some way the committee and the committee chair have done my bidding is a gross maligning of the conduct of Mr Gentleman and, to a lesser extent, Ms Porter. I only have to draw members’ attention to one of the findings in the report. I do not know whether Mrs Dunne has read the report. If she has, she should have seen that the main recommendation is that the variation be substantially changed.
I sign off on draft variations before they go to the committee. Clearly, the variation before the committee is my, as planning minister, and the government’s preferred position in relation to a variation to the territory plan.
I do not know whether Mrs Dunne has noticed, but Mr Gentleman and Ms Porter are not agreeing with the variation as proposed by me to them. So to suggest that in some way the planning committee is doing the bidding of me as the Minister for Planning is a nonsense and simply ignores the fact that the committee have come out and disagreed with the government’s variation.
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