Page 1204 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 May 2006
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I wish to speak briefly to the amendment. I am not expecting it, but I would like to have the support of the Assembly for my amendment. I have moved it to try to insert a little bit of democracy into this process. At this point in time, we are watching a very arrogant, schoolmasterish government wielding the big stick. I believe that a lot of what we are seeing today is a legacy of how the opposition members behaved on the estimates committee last year. It is very clear, especially from Ms MacDonald’s presentation, that that still rankles very strongly with the government.
I think that the opposition members who were on the estimates committee were not wise in their behaviour last year. Their bullying has not paid off. But I do not think it is fair that the whole of the ACT should pay for it by having a less transparent estimates process, by having more people to ask dorothy dixers and tie up the time of the bureaucrats who take the time to appear before us. So I am proposing that this committee have co-chairs that can operate together, rather than having a deputy chair and a chairperson, which has been the tradition, because I think that we have to try to save this process somehow.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for Planning) (12.26): The government will not be agreeing with Dr Foskey’s proposal today. Maybe we can all sit in a circle and just try to pick up the good vibes on whether this is a good idea, a good budget initiative. It would be a silly idea to have co-chairs. Who would be in charge of the committee? What a recipe for chaos that would be. What an absurd proposition. The government does not support it.
I want to respond to some of the other points Dr Foskey made in her speech to her amendment. One of those points was her assertion that she was trying to inject some democracy into this place. The Greens have been great champions of the Assembly and the role of the Assembly in asserting what it believes should be the appropriate direction. It is interesting how that changes and the Assembly is no longer the venue for democracy in this place when the Greens cannot influence it. It is very interesting how the argument changes. I have heard Lucy Horodny and Kerrie Tucker asserting as members the right of the Assembly to debate issues, have motions moved and decide on these sorts of matters. But all of a sudden when it does not suit the Greens, when the Greens cannot influence that because they failed to do so in the election, the Assembly is not the place for democracy, apparently. That is the assertion of Dr Foskey.
We will all have the opportunity in 2008 to go out and make our arguments and to ask the people of Canberra to decide what they believe is the best thing for their community and who should represent them. That is the way it works; we all understand that. That is the way it should work. The Greens failed in the last election to achieve a greater level of representation than they had. In fact, their vote went down in the last election. They did not even maintain the level of support that they had prior to the last election. For Dr Foskey to come into this place and assert that the Assembly is not democratic, that the Assembly cannot decide these matters, is an absurd argument. Go out, Dr Foskey, and say to the people of Canberra that the Assembly is not democratic.
Who elected us here? The people of Canberra elected us. All this majority government is saying is that we as a majority, as the party that gained the largest share of votes in the last election, wish to see one of our members, elected by the people of Canberra, as the
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