Page 1395 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 11 May 1994
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Does she want detailed prescriptions about public disclosure and everything else, or does she want to reduce the amount of prescriptive provision that is in the Bill? I do not think she knows. She wants two bob each way. In one part the Bill is not sufficiently prescriptive; in the next it is overly prescriptive. I am quite clear that she does not know what she is talking about, and if she had not had a comprehensive brief she would not have had anything to say. Somebody has handed her some notes and she has read them without really understanding what the notes say, let alone what the Bill says relative to what her own Bill says or does not say.
Then the Chief Minister gave us a little homily about what is and what is not corrupt conduct. Perhaps she is an expert in that field. I am not, but I do not find anything wrong with the description in this Bill of the kinds of behaviour that can be reported under the provisions of this Bill. Again, if it is overly prescriptive in the Chief Minister's mind, maybe that is a good thing, because in other places she said that it is underprescriptive, as I just pointed out. I do not think the Chief Minister really understands this. If she did understand it, if she had read this Bill carefully, if she had done what she exhorted the members of this Assembly to do - that is, sit down and compare her Bill with ours - I am sure she would have discovered that our Bill is much more comprehensive and much more appropriate. It is not simply a last minute add-on, cobbled together quickly to say that we have covered the subject, when up until two months ago the Government had no intention of making such provision, either in the public administration Bill or in any other way.
I think it is pretty clear that I support the Bill put forward by the Leader of the Opposition. I believe that it is necessary. I believe that it is timely. I believe that it is sufficiently comprehensive, not overly so. I do not support the Chief Minister's contention that it is overly prescriptive. I urge members of the Assembly to support the Bill.
MR STEVENSON (11.41): As many government and bureaucratic actions have become more secretive and closed, the need to let the public know about these actions has increased. In the past, when people have been prepared to do this, what has usually happened is that standard and severe reprisals have been brought against those public servants worthy of the name. Actions used in reprisal against them have involved threats, denigration, harassment, claims about mental illness and being sacked. This seems to be fairly standard operating procedure when anyone is prepared to stand up and let the public know what is going on.
While they need to be protected, there is a far more important factor here, and that is that the matters they bring up need to be effectively investigated. That is why they do it. They see something they believe is wrong, and the attack on them is made simply so that the matter will not be investigated. I brought up a matter some years ago in our First Assembly. Someone came along to me and said that there were problems in a particular government facility. I worked with that person over a period of many months. I did not immediately take any action, but I helped them as I could, and I saw what happened. The result was that the person was sacked, after being accused falsely of not doing his job.
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