Page 4596 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 6 December 1994
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As Mr Kaine has indicated, the committee has come up with 11 recommendations in relation to whistleblowing, which is, I think, a comprehensive response to the issue. Mr Kaine has spoken at some length about the various provisions which relate to those recommendations in the report. Finally, Madam Speaker, I am pleased that the Standing Committee on the Public Sector has been able to complete this task before the conclusion of the sittings of this Assembly. That should now enable debate to proceed on appropriate stand-alone whistleblowing legislation for the ACT. It is a matter that has been considered for some time by both members of the Standing Committee on the Public Sector and members of this Assembly. I believe that the Leader of the Opposition, Mrs Carnell, should be congratulated for the very extensive work that she has done in relation to her Public Interest Disclosure Bill and the manner in which she has responded to the recommendations made by the former Select Committee on the Establishment of an ACT Public Service and the Standing Committee on the Public Sector.
MR BERRY (Manager of Government Business) (8.23): As the author of the dissenting report on this committee's deliberations, I think the first thing I ought to deal with is the fact that the committee's deliberations were incomplete. I take members to recommendation 11, which talks about the need for an examination into whether or not there should be legislation in regard to private sector whistleblowing. In my dissenting report I mention specifically issues which need to be examined, such as corruption in the non-government sector. There has been no examination at all of those matters. I think we have to look at this report in context. It was a report that was done in circumstances where specific timelines had to be accommodated in the scheme of things. It was done against the background of legislation which had been introduced in what I felt was something of a political stunt on the issue of whistleblowing. I felt that the politics of the Assembly would necessarily show up in the report.
One of the important issues that we have to consider in relation to this matter is the circumstances of the various States in relation to whistleblowing legislation. Mr Kaine quite appropriately raised those areas. The committee looked at the South Australian Whistleblowers Protection Act, the Queensland Whistleblowers Protection Bill, the New South Wales Protected Disclosures Bill, Senator Christabel Chamarette's private members Whistleblowers Protection Bill, and the report of the Senate Standing Committee on Public Interest Whistleblowing. The only one which has been passed is the Queensland Whistleblowers Protection Bill; that is, apart from - wait for it - the ACT one which applies to the public service. The circumstances in all of those places are quite different from the ACT. They have had longstanding public service legislation which covers the way in which their public service operates; but in the ACT it is quite different. We had the opportunity to develop legislation which incorporated the management of our public service and a whistleblower provision. Because of the convergence of the need to deal with those issues, we were able to put together in one package some legislation which covered both areas - comprehensive legislation, very satisfactorily drafted, which dealt with whistleblower provisions.
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