Those wascally Liberals won’t be able to get up to their usual tricks for much longer says Chris Bourke.
The Canberra Liberals’ tactics to stymie Legislative Assembly Committee Reports will be harder to carry out, due to a motion passed by the Assembly today.
Dr Chris Bourke MLA said his motion, passed 9-8, in the Assembly today means Committee Chairs can’t just present a draft report and insist members accept or reject it, possibly resulting in no report emerging.
Instead members must now be given the chance to agree on the report paragraph by paragraph and hopefully find some common ground for a consensus report.
Dr Bourke said, “The amendment came about from Mr Hanson’s chairing of the ACT Legislative Assembly’s Budget Estimates Committee”.
“As Chair Mr Hanson would only accept amendments to the committee report which he personally agreed with, rather than adopting a consensus approach. He just wanted to ram his report through the committee.
“Mr Hanson’s approach left members no opportunity to find common ground within the report and instead members had to either accept an offensive report, abstain or vote to have no report.
“This amendment makes consensus reports more likely, yet the Liberals voted against it” Dr Bourke said.
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