Page 259 - Week 01 - Thursday, 27 February 2014
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MR SMYTH: Well, you are about to move a motion to table it. Go for your life. I don’t mind. I stand by everything I wrote.
MADAM SPEAKER: It is not a conversation; it is a debate.
MR SMYTH: I apologise, Madam Speaker. The issue is that, because of the nature of the committees that the government have set up, they have used their numbers, in conjunction with Mr Rattenbury, who has abandoned the Latimer House principles. The Greens were very keen on Latimer House when they were not in government. Now that they are in government they are not so keen on the scrutiny mechanisms that Latimer House says that parliaments should have to scrutinise the executive. So there is a lesson for everybody.
At the end of the day, the committee system is now being managed by the government. Out of the Chief Minister’s own mouth: “We will determine a procedural way to manage this.” There you have it. That is the total undermining of the committee system in this place. If you go back over time, people like Kerrie Tucker, Michael Moore and others used to say the committee system was the gem of this place because people came together and worked together. What has changed is the government’s insistence of having an insurance policy on all committees of two members so that anything critical of the government will not go ahead.
I am happy to table my report. When the chair tables it later I will stand and speak to it. There were a lot of good things in my report as well to hold the government to account. But when we offered the Labor members on the committee the opportunity to go through ours paragraph by paragraph, they said, “We don’t agree with anything you say.”
There is the nub. If you have got four, it breaks down to two-two and nothing will happen. Your era of openness and accountability is now down to, “We’ll use our numbers to determine a procedural way to manage this.” The demise of the committee system is encapsulated in those words from the Chief Minister. They will simply use their numbers on every occasion to get the outcome they want.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo—Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Corrections, Minister for Housing, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for Ageing) (10.51): I will be supporting the amendment because I think it goes to the very issue that is getting some airing here today. There is no reason why these committees cannot present reports to this Assembly. The fact that this has not happened on this occasion is a poor reflection. I am incredulous that these committees cannot work together to develop a report they can agree on.
Clearly there are going to be differences on some of the content, but Ms Berry indicated the number of witnesses that had come before the committee, a very broad spectrum of witnesses. I think it would have been a very interesting set of hearings. Surely the four members of that committee could have found some area that they agreed on. I do not understand why this place is not working to bring these reports
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