The Greens had insulated ACT decisions from Federal issues and the vote should be seen in local terms. The Greens had not yet decided how to direct preferences for the by-election, he said. There is a debate within the Greens about whether to direct preferences away from Labor for the by-election _ where government is not at stake _ to show that Labor should not take Green preferences for granted and that Labor should change its policies away from logging towards forest protection. Others in the Greens party argue that it would be unfair to have a put-Labor-last campaign when Labor’s candidate, Sue Robinson, has been a strong advocate against logging in native forests.
The Assembly’s standing committee system has been cut by 11 positions and two committees under a structure proposed by Independent MLA Michael Moore and supported by the Liberals and Paul Osborne. The key change is the amalgamation of the former planning and environment committees. Mr Moore is expected to chair that committee which will have three other members a Green and one each from the majors.
Labor’s Deputy Leader, Wayne Berry, described it as a rort because the committee did not reflect the composition of the Assembly. Labor’s Bill Wood said it was silly to amalgamate the two busiest committees. Liberal Gary Humphries said the new structure with fewer, smaller committees would relieve impossible workloads on some MLAs who had to serve on up to seven committees to make up the numbers. He said the extra cross-bench represented the fact that the new Assembly contained an extra cross-bench member _ four compared to three in the old Assembly. The other standing committees are: public Accounts, administration and procedure, social policy, public sector, legal affairs, scrutiny of Bills, and tourism.