Page 5353 - Week 14 - Thursday, 19 November 2009

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these areas then eventually you are going to go backwards. Eventually you are allowing complacency to creep in. At times we have seen extremes around Australia and around the world of corruption in the process. We need to put in place laws that guard against that to the maximum possible extent.

There is no doubt that the vast majority of people who stand in public life are people of goodwill who seek to serve their communities to the best possible extent and to comply with the laws of the nation. Of course, we know that occasionally people come into the process who are not. Our laws need to give confidence to the community. They need to give confidence that the system is as robust as possible, that it is as open and as transparent as possible. Hopefully, what we have today—and I am sure we do have it today—is the first step in improving that process in the ACT, the first step in reforming things.

We can lead the nation on this. There has been a lot of discussion from leaders around the country. As has been noted, there have been discussion papers, green papers and the like at the federal level. There has been discussion at the state level. We could well be one of the first jurisdictions to act on this, to take strong action to make genuine reforms. We have an opportunity in this Assembly to make, hopefully, long lasting reforms which will stand the test of time.

Our community deserves this. We will continue to lead the way and to push for this. We now turn it over to the committee. We trust that the tripartite committee will look at this rigorously. We trust that they will look at this with an open mind and with a view to improving and safeguarding our democracy. We trust that they will ensure that the laws that we put in place now stand the test of time for the next 10, 20 or 30 years and beyond. I commend the motion to the Assembly and I thank members for their support.

Mr Corbell’s amendment to Ms Hunter’s proposed amendment negatived.

Ms Hunter’s amendment agreed to.

Motion, as amended, agreed to.

Executive business—precedence

Motion (by Mr Corbell) put:

That Executive business be called on.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

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