Page 1889 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 14 June 1994
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The whistleblowers legislation is another area that causes us some concern. There are two pieces of legislation before the house. One is Part XII of the Government's Bill; the other is a private members Bill put forward by Mrs Carnell, the Leader of the Opposition. The committee is of the view that stand-alone legislation is the appropriate way to go. The implication in the Government's Bill that it is only public servants who require protection under whistleblowers legislation simply does not hold up. You have to have stand-alone legislation, in the committee's view, that provides protection for anybody, public servant or not, who brings information forward.
Mr Deputy Speaker, there are major issues in this Bill that have not been resolved. There are major sectors of the Government's own employees who do not accept this Bill in its present form. I think it would be foolhardy and, indeed, dangerous for this Assembly to endorse the legislation or for this Government to implement it in its present form. I hope that the Chief Minister and her Executive members are listening, because there are other issues beyond the legislation that the committee thought were important. The very first one of those is what the functions of this organisation are to be. Where have they been defined? What is the organisation to be? We have heard nothing about that. All we know is that the Government has already established a new department. We have reorganised by establishing a new department, and that is the answer to the question; but what is the organisation supposed to do? How is it supposed to be organised?
There is concern about the subordinate legislation and the standards, which are not part of this legislation, that will be promulgated later. Given the difficulties with the legislation, you can imagine the difficulties that are going to emerge when the Government starts developing masses of subordinate legislation to put the Bills into effect. It simply is not good enough. I have noted that the Chief Minister says that this immutable Bill is not susceptible to amendment. As I said, this morning I got a missive from the Chief Minister with 109 amendments. I have not even had a chance to look at those amendments to see what they do, and I guarantee that neither has anybody else. Yet tonight the Chief Minister is going to expect us to debate them. It is absolutely absurd. It cannot be done intelligently, and what we are going to end up with, if the Government is not careful, is second-rate legislation and a second-rate public service, when the promise, a year or more ago, was so great. The Government is simply not delivering; it is not meeting its obligations.
The Government is going to get up shortly and say, in considering this report, that we, the Opposition, or we, the committee, are delaying their legislation. I will lay that to rest right now. The committee is not recommending anything of the kind. We do want the thing properly considered, but the fault lies with the Government. I do not accept that it is the committee that is delaying the report, that it is the Assembly's problem, or that it is the Opposition's problem. It certainly is not the PSU's problem. They have been trying their darnedest to get it fixed. It is not the problem of the professional officers, scientists and managers in ACTEW. They have put quite forcefully the case that they want something fixed. For the Government to argue that somebody else is delaying this legislation is a fallacy, and I put it to rest right now.
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