Page 3894 - Week 10 - Thursday, 20 September 2018
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Omit paragraph (2), substitute:
“(2) the Committee reports by 1 November 2018;”.
What my amendment does is give another week for the JACS committee’s deliberations.
Opposition members interjecting—
MS LE COUTEUR: I can already hear the comments from the opposition, and I do share concerns about the timing for this, but I would like to speak to this from the point of view of someone who in the Seventh Assembly, as the chair of PAC, did an inquiry into CTP insurance over, I would say, a number of months. I found that was a very difficult process because basically it was very hard to work out what on earth was going on, CTP not being one of my strong suits.
I went along as an observer to the collaboration hub for CTP earlier this year. I would have to say that I was incredibly impressed. The information base that was provided to the participants in the deliberative democracy exercise was much easier to understand and much more comprehensive than the information base that the public accounts committee had in the Seventh Assembly. I really reflected on how much more information they had and how they were in a better position to make a judgement than we were.
In supporting a fairly short time frame for this inquiry I am bearing in mind that I think that basically all the information the JACS committee wants is already at hand. The stakeholders who are involved all know this is happening. I am sure that the Greens are not the only party that has been extensively lobbied by stakeholders on this subject.
The stakeholders are all ready to provide whatever additional comments they feel are necessary. There will not have to be the normal time line of an inquiry, waiting a month or two for public submissions. There is all the information base that went to the deliberative democracy process, the citizens jury, and the stakeholders are ready and waiting to give someone interested their comments.
I would also say that the reason for the abbreviated time line is that while, no doubt, the exposure draft and the bill are not absolutely perfect, I think it is highly, highly, highly likely that the bill that will result from this process is superior to the current situation.
Mr Gentleman went through the advantages of the proposed changes, so I will not bore the Assembly by going through them again. Suffice it to say, it looks to me like we actually do want to make this change and, given that we would like to do it in a reasonably timely fashion, I think the time proposed for the inquiry, while not ideal, is in fact workable, given the huge information base already available to the JACS committee. I commend my amendment to the Assembly.
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