Page 1750 - Week 05 - Thursday, 2 April 2009

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We have had a look back at past estimates. Other than in the last Assembly, estimates committees had five members. We feel comfortable with the proposal put forward on the membership of the estimates committee. I do understand that there are two Labor backbenchers who want to have the opportunity to participate in various committees and so forth. There are a number of select committees coming up that will provide those opportunities. The Greens will not be supporting this amendment.

Question put:

That Mr Corbell’s amendment be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Ayes 7

Noes 10

Mr Barr

Ms Porter

Ms Bresnan

Ms Hunter

Ms Burch

Mr Stanhope

Mr Coe

Ms Le Couteur

Mr Corbell

Mr Doszpot

Mr Rattenbury

Ms Gallagher

Mrs Dunne

Mr Seselja

Mr Hargreaves

Mr Hanson

Mr Smyth

Question so resolved in the negative.

Motion, as amended, agreed to.

Standing and temporary orders—amendments

MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (10.25): I move:

That temporary order 213A agreed to by the Assembly on 12 February 2009 be amended as follows:

Insert the following new paragraph:

“(5A) Where the Assembly requires a document to be returned, either the document requested or a claim of privilege must be given to the Clerk within 14 calendar days of the date of the order by the Assembly.”.

I will speak very briefly to this. This is a small adjustment that I am putting forward to the new standing order that we adopted just in February relating to the process for the seeking of government documents and, where necessary, the appointment of an independent arbiter.

I simply see this as a small procedural addition to the motion. We did discuss this briefly when we talked about the standing order in February. In light of recent experience, the reason I propose this motion is that both myself as the Speaker and the Clerk who are responsible for the various elements of standing order 213A were left in a position where there was no clear time line. I am introducing this simply to provide clarity in respect of the time line in which the government chooses to claim privilege or not over a certain document. I see it simply as a further clarification of the procedure around this standing order.

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