Page 3574 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012
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I believe that the recommendations contained in this report are designed to ensure that the self-government act lives up to those ideals and principles espoused by the federal minister when he introduced the bill for self-government in the territory, and that is to ensure that the residents of the territory have the same democratic rights and responsibilities as their fellow Australians. I commend the report to the Assembly.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (11.33): It is appropriate that we have conducted this review. All members of this place and certainly all members of the committee I would hope agree that we are now a mature and well-functioning Assembly and that it was time for us to look at the act under which we were formed and under which we operate, which gives us our powers and limits on our powers, and come to a view as to whether it was up to date and still appropriate. I thank my fellow committee members for the approach taken. Mr Rattenbury has highlighted that there was at times some vigorous debate, but there was a desire from all members of the committee to form, where possible, a collegiate approach and, where we could, a unanimous report. In all but one recommendation we achieved at, and that is commendable. It goes to the point that I made initially—that is, we have become a mature and well-functioning Assembly.
I thank the many people who put in submissions and appeared before the committee. Interestingly, the vast bulk if not all of the submissions and the people who appeared reflected the view that we are a well-operating Assembly. The majority saw the need for us to be given fewer restrictions and more ability to determine things like our own size. An increase in the size of the Assembly was a call from a number of people. Certainly the people who are engaged and interested in the Assembly demonstrated that they concur that this is now a mature and well-functioning place.
Turning to the recommendations, a number of recommendations could essentially be characterised as technical in that they recommend fixing up the self-government act because provisions have now been superseded by other pieces of legislation as time has marched on. The only one of those I would like to address is recommendation 6, where we have unanimously agreed that section 23(1)(g) be removed. The advice we received on that was a moving feast. The latest advice indicated that it would be appropriate that section 23(1)(g) be removed, but I note that that came late, and we have not necessarily had the full time to consider that. But certainly the advice indicates that that is okay.
One of the two recommendations that are of most substance and will receive the most attention is recommendation 2, which says, in essence, that the Assembly should have the power with a special majority to determine our own size. Based on a discussion of the evidence, I can see no reason why we should not have that power, which is similar to all other parliaments in Australia. The committee did not form a view on whether we should be bigger or smaller; just simply that we should have the power to determine the size.
As an aside, there was some discussion about our relative size compared to other jurisdictions. I note that on Monday evening I was having a chat with someone who was a former member of the Norfolk Island Legislative Assembly, which has nine
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