When I first heard I had said that, I went back and looked at every transcript we had from this committee and I was unable to find any point where I had actually said that. What I did say was that we should proceed apace. My experience as a former member of Parliament is that as a group we feel most comfortable dealing with the text of legislation rather than discussion papers, because then we can look at what the legislation actually is and we can test what it will do based on that.
Second, it's always very difficult to deal with amending legislation if you don't understand the legislation you're amending as well, because everything feeds into the system. So my view is the same as it was before when the committee asked me to draft the open government act. It is better to work from the text of the open government act to try to deal with these concerns, and it's probably best to start looking at the open government act and working your way down through it in a coherent, logical way, so you can see how the pieces fit together. Then you can make intelligent determinations as to what should be in, what should be out, and what amendments may be required.
The committee, I would say, has to do the hard work of going through it.