THE Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, has tapped in to an obvious sense of community dissatisfaction with government in the ACT. She has floated the idea of doing away with the Westminster structure of the ACT Legislative Assembly and replacing it with a collegiate or committee system. Under her idea, rather than having individual Ministers administering portfolios, each portfolio area would be administered by a committee of, say three, MLAs.
There is only one meritorious element in her statements so far about the issue: that she is floating it as an idea rather than as a definite policy position. Mercifully, this means the thing can be quietly forgotten. The episode shows that Ms Carnell is refreshingly inexperienced in the wily ways of politicians. It is usual for them to float ideas by getting someone else to send the balloon up or to hold the kite string, or to allow it to float anonymously as “”an Opposition source”. If everyone says what a wonderful balloon the politician claims it; if the balloon is seen as a fizzer it is forgotten. At least Ms Carnell did not stoop to that sort of gutless hypocrisy. Politicians should not be condemned for floating ideas; nor should Ms Carnell. For too long Australian politics has been straight-jacketed by fear of new ideas. However, that does not mean the idea itself cannot be pulled apart, and pulled apart with some vigour.
The trouble with running a portfolio by committee is that each committee member will duck and weave and blame each other when trouble arises. An individual Minister, on the other hand, has nowhere to turn to and must carry the can _ subject, of course, to the usual finger-pointing at the department. None the less, if something goes wrong the individual minister feels the heat and ultimately must take responsibility. Under Westminster the precise ambit of that responsibility is undefined. However, it does mean that if the public and the Opposition keep sustained and deserved pressure on a defective Minister, the Minister will have to resign. Policy directions then change and public administration is the better for it. This could not happen under a committee system.
Pointing to various town councils as models for a committee system does not help. Councils do not have the range of legislative functions that the Assembly has. Moreover, they are subject to a State Minister who in turn is responsible to an elected Parliament.
As the Conservation Council has rightly pointed out, the task for the Opposition in the ACT should be to use the weapons of the Westminster system more effectively, not to attempt to change the structure of it to something that is likely to produce a worse result. If the Assembly cannot make government more accountable under Westminster, it has no chance under a committee system. Independent Helen Szuty has perceptively pointed out that Ms Carnell has misinterpreted the dissatisfaction with government in the ACT as a concern about its structure, rather than the behaviour of this government.
Perhaps Ms Carnell, and the Liberals in general, feel that Canberra is forever a Labor town and that the only hope they will get at sharing power is to change the two-party system. This defeatist nonsense. In local Assembly elections both before and after self-government the ACT electorate has never given Labor a majority. There is every opportunity for the present Opposition to gain government, but it will only do so through hard work and intelligent use of the opportunities that Westminster affords like no other system to expose weaknesses in the Government _ and there are enough of them.