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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-07-15 Daily Xml
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LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL REFORM

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:22): I have a supplementary question. Now that the minister has referred to the reduction of the numbers in the Legislative Council and the convention that the Legislative Council has generally been half the number of members in the House of Assembly, why did he and the other Rann government ministers choose to reduce the number of members in the Legislative Council by six and not choose to reduce the number in the House of Assembly by 12?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Small Business) (15:22): The Legislative Council does not have a nexus provision as is the case with the Commonwealth Constitution. There are reasons for that being the case in the Senate, which for a start has a different composition. Each state has the same number of representatives regardless—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: In Tasmania, the upper house has single-member electorates and the lower house has multiple member electorates. So, there are differences. The fact is that the Tasmanian parliament has reduced its numbers but, as I understand it from speaking to people from Tasmania, that parliament has been able to cope with all its traditional functions. There is no nexus provision in the South Australian Constitution as is the case in the Senate and, as I have said, we do not have the peculiarities of the Senate, where each state, even the smaller states such as Tasmania, have the same number of senators as the larger states, such as New South Wales.

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