Page 1390 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 11 May 1994
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A major difficulty I have with the Public Interest Disclosure Bill is that it does not cover the majority of public servants in the ACT Government Service. That is the major deficiency in the Bill. Public servants are currently employed under the Public Service Act of 1922 and are bound by that Act and the Commonwealth Crimes Act. The Bill before us today cannot override those Acts, and it is silly to pretend that it can. The duties of public servants under those Acts are governed by those Acts. If you leave aside all of those public servants, you will see that Mrs Carnell's Bill covers only about half of those staff who are currently employed by the Government Service.
Mr De Domenico: I think you are wrong, like you were yesterday.
MS FOLLETT: Madam Speaker, I do not believe that I am wrong on that matter, but I am prepared to hear debate on it.
Another grave omission in Mrs Carnell's Bill is that it does not provide for public disclosure, and the whistleblower provisions in the Public Sector Management Bill do. I think it is a major shortcoming in the current Bill. What the Public Interest Disclosure Bill does do, and it is like the provisions in the Government's Public Sector Management Bill, is allow for disclosure to an officer within each agency, and I agree with that, and to the Ombudsman, and I agree with that also. But the Government's Bill has gone further than that, and I think it is an important further step. Our Bill not only allows disclosure in addition to the Auditor-General, which Mrs Carnell appears to have overlooked, but also provides, in certain circumstances, for disclosure to the public or to the media. Again, I think that is a significant advance which the Public Interest Disclosure Bill has not dealt with.
Mrs Carnell's Bill does allow disclosure to the Ombudsman as a proper authority, and I have said that the Government's legislation also contains that provision. Clearly, it is one that I support. The only difference in Mrs Carnell's Bill from my Bill is the power under clause 14 of the Carnell Bill for the Ombudsman to direct a public sector unit to implement certain procedures. The Government believes that procedural issues are more appropriately dealt with by the Public Service Commissioner in the management standards. Given that the commissioner has the role in management of whole-of-service issues, and the whistleblower provisions are a whole-of-service issue, I believe that that is the appropriate course of action to follow. Again, it is a matter of embedding the whistleblower provisions into the appropriate legislative framework. It is my view that the Public Sector Management Bill is the appropriate legislative framework.
If I could turn to Part III of Mrs Carnell's Bill, this essentially spells out in detail matters that already take place under Government provisions, and I do not consider that there is a need to spell them out in that way. For example, Investigation under proper authority, clause 18 of Mrs Carnell's Bill, duplicates provisions that are already in the misconduct provisions, which are linked to the whistleblower provisions, and very importantly too, as well as duplicating investigatory powers that are already spelt out in the Ombudsman Act and the Audit Act. That is one of the matters I referred to in my opening remarks.
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