Page 4405 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 30 November 1994
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STATUTORY OFFICES (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) BILL 1994
Debate resumed from 10 November 1994, on motion by Ms Follett:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR KAINE (5.48): Madam Speaker, I support this Bill. There are at the moment, I think, 253 statutory appointments within the Australian Capital Territory. At present those appointments are made either by a Minister or by the Executive. This Bill removes about 140 of those statutory appointments and makes them the responsibility of a chief executive of an agency. It is sensible that this should be so, because these positions are essentially those where the functions of the statutory office are carried out by a public servant in the normal course of his duties. It is therefore appropriate that the chief executive officers should make the appointments to those positions. There are, however, 111 other positions which will remain the responsibility of either a Minister or the Executive. Those positions and posts are of a quite different nature and it is appropriate that they remain the responsibility of either a Minister or the Executive, although I suspect that some of them in the future may come under consideration for inclusion under the provisions of this Statutory Offices Act.
A legislative review committee has made some comments on this Bill and I notice that the Minister has taken up those matters. It was my view, having read the Bill, that the Minister would deal with these matters pretty much in the way that he has. He has made the point that the purpose of this Bill is primarily to deal with appointments to statutory offices; it is not to do with some of the minor administrative matters, as to whether or not a statutory officer has an identity card or something of that nature. Generally speaking, I have no difficulty with the Minister's response to the matters raised.
However, there was one interesting point brought to the Minister's attention, and that was in regard to the Lakes Act of 1976. The word "may" is used. In other words, at present the Minister may appoint a delegate. The Minister, in his response to the question about whether that was deliberate, said, "Yes, it is", and he made a distinction between the responsibility of the chief executive in the future, on the one hand, to create and maintain an office for a delegate and, on the other hand, the responsibility to appoint somebody to that office. It seems to me to be rather odd that in this particular case, and this one only, the Minister is saying that the chief executive has a responsibility under the law to create and maintain an office but he does not have the responsibility to fill that office. It seems to me to be something of an absurdity. If the office is not required, why make it mandatory for the chief executive to create and maintain an office to which he may never appoint anybody? It seems a little bit of a play on words, a little bit of a semantic argument. It is not a matter on which I intend to take issue, but it seems rather curious to me that the Minister has responded in that fashion. Madam Speaker, I believe that what the Government is doing in making this change in the way a statutory officer is appointed is eminently sensible and, as I said at the beginning, I support the Bill.
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