Speaker "convention" arrives out of thin air!

I’m having a little wonder … what advantage would there be for The Greens if one of their number became Speaker? What about a Labor, or a Liberal? What is the advantage to be gained overall? Can someone knowledgeable let loose with a good rant for me?

It hasn’t been done in Tasmania (to my knowledge) because the majority was so slim, they didn’t dare water down their numbers. It did get offered, but The Greens refused.

Thanks in advance for satisfying my curiosity and keeping me away from the horsies. 🙂

Tetranitrate said :

if the Liberals are smart

Actually, scratch that.

The greens should put one of their own up as speaker – if the Liberals are smart they’ll back them.

All I know is, I’ve got Stanhope overload already . . . how many announcements has he made this week, and it’s only Tuesday!

Just this minute heard that Labor is proposing Mary Porter. Isn’t she “the Member of a 1000 amendments” or something. Does this mean the Speaker will now spend more time speaking than the Ministers? If elected of course.
Greens first big test, anyone giving odds they cave on this one, therebye setting the scene for four years of another majority Labor government, just a bit lefter?
Agreed LG, all care, no responsibility.

I find the speaker gig quite surprising. I would have thought the Green’s would want to put their hand up so they’d have a chance to actually influence how the Assembly operates. If they don’t go for the job, it’ll add to my view that all they’re interested in is gaining as much power as they can without actually having any responsibility attached.

If Labor had of won at least 1 extra seat then I’d be fine for them to take the Speaker’s job again but since they only have seven (with 5 of them to be in Cabinet) I’d say the Speaker’s gig is fair game for anyone.

My other conspiracy theory is that Stanhope wants to dump an existing Minister in the reshuffle but the only good PR way to do it is to ‘promote’ them to Speaker.

Clear logical thinking there Al, (no wonder you had difficulty finding the right builder – they must of found you difficult).
There is a really good arguments for separating the making the rules from applying the rules functions.

I’d suggest that by including public transport and transport infrastructure planning etc would put a lot of interested parties noses out of joint, which makes it an exceedingly good idea, and no doubt one that will be overlooked.

As for “conventions” FFS, we hardly have been around long enough to have them let alone to pretend they are sacrosanct.

Zed’s response to this on 666 yesterday could probably be summed up as WTF??

On the reshuffle, at least these things can happen in the ACT government without the Fed’s unnecessary complete redesigning of departments and moving everyone around – an industry in its own right in this town.

So how would people restructure the portfolios and or departments?

I would shift transport design back to planning, but cut ACTPLA’s planning and approvals sections apart. A normal departmental arm should undertake all the planning and design work for land development, transport design and land release should be folded into this back from the CMD. The arm’s-length situation of the Authority from the Assembly should not apply to the planning processes – that is core responsibility for MLAs. Strategic environmental planning could also be combined into this, to the extent that it isn’t already.

The development approval section however should remain as a free-standing authority, with arms-length from the Assembly.

Transport delivery (construction and public transport) should be more closely combined, as the overall transport budget must be kept together – expenditure on public transport offsets costs in road construction, therefore placing the functions together places the budgets together so that this aspects finally gets recognised. Therefore ACTION should cease being a separate agency.

Education is a massive portfolio and should be free-standing, probably a single ministry. Likewise health. perhaps then the various other community services out of TaMS and DHCS should be combined?

I also think that the water and wastewater functions now at arms length in ACTEW shouldn’t be. Health and hygiene services are core government functions and should never (IMHO) be privatised or even structured in a way that would allow possible privatising.

My thoughts. Happy to discuss.