Page 647 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 28 March 2006
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Working Families in the ACT—Select Committee
Interim report
MR GENTLEMAN: (Brindabella) (10.44): I present the following report:
Working Families in the Australian Capital Territory—Select Committee—Interim Report, dated 27 March 2006, including additional comments (Mrs Burke), together with a copy of the extracts of the relevant minutes of proceedings.
I seek leave to move a motion authorising the report for publication.
Leave granted.
MR GENTLEMAN: I move:
That the report be authorised for publication.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
MR GENTLEMAN: I move:
That the report be noted.
I table in the Assembly today the interim report of the Select Committee on Working Families in the ACT on its inquiry as outlined in the committee’s terms of reference. On 5 May 2005, this Assembly supported a motion to establish a select committee on working families in the ACT. I have the honour of chairing the select committee.
I have great pleasure in tabling this report. For a number of reasons, I find myself a little melancholy. The first reason for my despair is that I anticipate that one of my committee colleagues, Mrs Burke, will find some way to ridicule yet again the work of the committee and, in doing so, make a mockery of the evidence of those witnesses who came before us. She has led into this with her additional comments.
Mr Speaker, the evidence given was done so with the best intentions of giving the committee a greater insight into working practices in the ACT, and not from one perspective but from all. So how did Mrs Burke choose to respond to a witness who had informed the committee that he feared for the safety of his son? Mrs Burke said during the hearings:
Frankly, I don’t know why we have this select committee. I have to put that on the public record.
For Mrs Burke’s benefit, I will state for the public record why this committee was formed and how important the inquiry is to working families of the Canberra community. Of importance are the actual effects and concerns that were expressed to the committee during these deliberations. Some of these effects are noted in the conclusion,
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