Page 479 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 8 March 2011
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MS HUNTER: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. As my colleague Mr Rattenbury has said, we will not be supporting Mr Seselja’s amendment. I think the amendment just is not right. It was actually an amendment that was brought in by Mrs Dunne in December of last year, particularly that first part, and at the time I said that the amendment showed significant ignorance of our constitution and the way it distributes power within our federal system. This is applying to paragraph 1 of Mr Seselja’s amendment today.
Unlike the states, whose constitutions and powers enjoy the protection of the constitution under sections 106 and 107 and whose legislative jurisdiction is protected by scope of matters assigned to the commonwealth parliament, the territories enjoy no equivalent status or rights. The constitution, in section 122, gives a plenary power to create a government for the territories. Rather than any positive legislative jurisdiction, the commonwealth constitution only gives a range of protections and limitations on the legislative power that can be exercised by the commonwealth and the ACT government. The only source of our legislative authority is the ACT self-government act. The powers and structure of that act are at the discretion of the commonwealth parliament.
So as I said, the only limitations on the commonwealth parliament are limitations that would otherwise apply to any exercise of legislative power by that parliament. Otherwise there is no inherent limitation on the jurisdiction that can be given to the territory parliament, and to attempt to equate one, as this amendment does, is simply wrong. And that is what we said back in December to part of that motion.
I do support some of the statements made by Mr Hargreaves around the idea of a review and sending it off in that form. I think that we have been lobbying hard. I think that we should be tripartisan in our approaches to the commonwealth about getting further reviews of the self-government act. But I think any idea or notion that it is the Canberra Liberals that are leading the charge on this really needs to be put to one side. But I would like to see tripartisan support and movement for a more thorough review, as I said earlier.
Mr Seselja and Mr Smyth really did try to bring in this idea of Senator Bob Brown and a disallowance motion around the GDE. And I point out quite clearly that the—
Mrs Dunne: Embarrassing for you.
MS HUNTER: No, not at all embarrassing, Mrs Dunne. It is pretty clear actually. Because the NCA controlled the land, that was the issue. It was not any suburban street. Mr Seselja is now trying to put out the view that any federal politician can stop a road being built in any suburb in the ACT, which is a complete and utter nonsense. In this case it was around land that was controlled by the NCA and it is Senator Brown’s job to take up these issues in the federal parliament. This was under commonwealth jurisdiction and it is his role—
Mrs Dunne: He was doing his job?
Mr Hanson: Doing his duty.
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