2016-06-07
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Mr Rich-Phillips and Mr Mulino have covered quite expansively what I had intended to spend only a minute or two on. It is very important that the Legislative Council, and particularly its committee system, is adequately resourced. When this house deals with legislation or another matter before it, it needs to be able to do the best job it can on behalf of the Victorian people, and that generally means running some kind of inquiry or inquisition, big or small. The house needs to be able to work, and I am sure there are some new members in this place who now wholeheartedly embrace this philosophy. Our parliamentary committees need to be able to work quickly, they need to be able to work effectively and they need basic resources.
So much work has been done so far this year by these committees that in fact they very quickly exhausted the small amount of funding that was made available to them. We are not talking about spa pools for Parliament House here. We are talking about the basic money that is required in order for MPs to do their job and for this chamber to do its job, which is to get to the bottom of matters, issues and sometimes legislation and make the best possible outcome. This chamber is not simply a widget factory that can be run for maximum financial efficiency. The job is done when the job is done, and it costs what it costs to run a parliamentary committee system.
I have been here 10 years. I have seen how long it has taken to build the system up to the level it is at, and I have seen the incredible work that it is now doing. It is now starting to hold its head up with the Senate and other parliaments that have been doing this kind of work for a very long time. We would not want to see that choked off right now, and that is why it is very important that there is adequate funding and flexibility provided within the Parliament's budget, and within that the budget of the Legislative Council, particularly for the committees.
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