Page 4680 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 7 December 1994
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consideration by the Government of our response to that report. What we are seeing here, I believe, is an attempt to ram this matter through in an opportunistic fashion, when we have had less than 12 hours to consider the Assembly committee's report. It is an insult to the Assembly committee system and an insult to a committee that was chaired by Mr Kaine, a member of the Opposition's own party.
MRS CARNELL (Leader of the Opposition) (12.22), in reply: Madam Speaker, I think that this whole process has been totally the opposite to an insult to the Assembly. As the Assembly would be aware, this Bill was first tabled in February this year - not exactly two minutes ago. It was then subjected to a committee process, which was conducted with public hearings and all of the usual bells and whistles of Assembly committees. In June this year, the committee came forward with recommendations on the Public Sector Management Bill, the Public Sector Management (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill and my Bill - the Public Interest Disclosure Bill 1994. We then passed the Public Sector Management Bill. One of the recommendations of that committee was that the committee should look further at stand-alone whistleblowers legislation; that the committee should report to the Assembly; and that stand-alone whistleblowers legislation should then be debated and enacted in this place. The process has taken from February until December - not exactly overnight.
The second set of recommendations of the Public Sector Committee was tabled in this house yesterday. My staff worked with people from the legislative drafting area for a number of hours yesterday, after the report was tabled, to come up with the amendments, which were distributed in this house last night, in an attempt to give everyone an opportunity to have a look at them before today - the last private members day of this Assembly. I think that process has been an appropriate process. The members of that committee and members of the Assembly will remember that a number of those amendments had already been drafted and had gone to the committee. So, they were not drafted just last night. They were drafted a number of weeks ago and given to the committee as recommendations for the way that the Public Interest Disclosure Bill could be brought into line with the original committee's recommendations.
Madam Speaker, the recommendations that were part of the report on whistleblowers legislation for the ACT, tabled in this place yesterday, have been addressed. I have taken on board all of those recommendations. My amendments totally reflect all of those recommendations. I do not step away from any of them. Recommendation 1 is reflected in the amendments; recommendation 2 is covered by clause 9 of the Bill; recommendation 3, as in the Public Sector Management Act, is covered by the PID Bill's definition of "public interest disclosure", which is clause 3; recommendation 4 is in clause 4; recommendation 5 is covered by amendment No. 8; recommendation 6 is clause 9; recommendation 7 is clause 33; recommendation 8 is clause 10; recommendation 9 is clause 22; and recommendation 10 is amendment No. 11. Recommendation 11 is that a committee of the Third Assembly inquire into the need for legislation with regard to private sector whistleblowers. The Liberal Party would be very happy to be part of that committee process. We believe that that is the next step in legislation in this area. We do not believe that it stops with the public sector.
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