Page 2525 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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Mr Corbell: The truth is out there, Zed.
MR SESELJA: Mr Corbell makes the snide interjections, but what is being agreed to by the Greens and the Labor Party here is a joint ACT-commonwealth review. It is not the ACT Assembly and the commonwealth parliament reviewing it; it is a joint ACT-commonwealth review. We can only assume that that is the ACT government and the federal Labor government. If anyone is going to suggest that, when those two governments get together, they are not going to in some way try and steer it in a way that favours the Labor Party, that is a ridiculous proposition. We have gone from an apparent will to have a tripartisan position to one where two parties went and did the deal but this deal favours one party: it favours the party in government here and nationally.
The outcome that we are likely to get as a result of this review will be one that, firstly, probably does not have the checks and balances we would like and, secondly, favours the ALP. They are our concerns. We believe this is the wrong approach. This is the wrong way to go; it does not make any logical sense to do it in this way.
If you are serious, the Assembly should agree to what we want. If we are a parliament that no longer needs a commonwealth, we should be able to make these decisions and say to the commonwealth, “Here it is; this is what we want.” That would have a lot of force. I believe that would have a lot of force—if we, after a period of due consideration, came to a conclusion about what we want. What we are doing is a mishmash of ideas and essentially a path that allows the ALP, both here and federally, to determine the way forward for the people of the ACT. We have grave concerns about that.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) Mr Speaker, I seek leave to make a statement under standing order 46.
MR SPEAKER: Do you claim to have been misrepresented?
MR CORBELL: Yes.
MR SPEAKER: Please proceed.
MR CORBELL: In his comments Mr Seselja suggested that I had said that there was no need for checks and balances. That is not correct. What I said—and Mr Seselja has misrepresented me—was that there is a need for checks and balances, but it should be within the whim of this place and the wit of this place to determine them. I used as an example the fact that the electoral arrangements that were determined by this place and subsequently passed by a referendum of the ACT community put in place checks and balances. I used that as an example of the fact that it is completely within the wit of the ACT, as a legislature and as a community, to establish the checks and balances necessary to prevent abuses of power. At no time did I suggest that there should be a winding back or a removal of checks and balances, only that the ACT should be capable of determining those matters for itself.
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