Page 4720 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 13 December 2005
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practice the inherent nature of intergovernmental negotiations makes difficult identifying agreements that require negotiation under the act. In many cases intergovernmental negotiations proceed for an extended time and cover a complex range of issues.
It is common for negotiations to focus on principles rather than on detail until very near their conclusion. In other cases negotiations are called on with a sense of urgency, proceed very quickly and are finalised only a short time after they commenced. In both cases the likelihood that ACT legislation would be required becomes apparent only shortly before an agreement is concluded. In those cases consulting the Assembly is of little practical consequence as members have little, if any, opportunity to influence the outcome.
The regime established by the act is limited. Many intergovernmental agreements do not involve legislation and thus are not captured by the provisions of the act. In some cases agreements that have a great impact on the lives of Canberrans do not involve ACT legislation. In such cases the act does nothing to improve the community’s oversight of executive action. Indeed, the consultation mandated by the act of providing details of negotiations to Assembly members and committees is unnecessarily limited through not affording the wider ACT community an opportunity to be aware of the territory’s intergovernmental commitments.
Perhaps the greatest indication of the failure of the act to achieve its ambition is the absence of debate arising from notifications made under the act. In the eight years since the Administration (Interstate Agreements) Act was entered onto the ACT statute books there has been virtually no debate in the Assembly arising from notifications of intergovernmental agreement negotiations that were covered by the act. Instead, much greater interest has been shown in international agreements dealing with matters such as trade, over which the Australian Capital Territory has very little control.
We need a better approach to consultation regarding intergovernmental agreements—an approach that has a broader scope and is accessible to all Canberrans, and an approach that facilitates some debate. We must acknowledge that the act has failed to live up to its aims. We should not hold onto the act just because it is there. The statute books should not be weighed down with laws that do not achieve their aims. If we did that we would have laws for the sake of having laws, which is what this act has become. This act is a law for the sake of having a law.
The new approach that the government is introducing for intergovernmental agreement consultation, which is threefold, will improve the transparency of the executive’s actions. The first of these new approaches involves providing information on intergovernmental agreements that are under negotiation. The department will compile a whole-of-government list of current negotiations towards intergovernmental agreements that it is anticipated the minister will sign. The list will be updated and tabled in the Assembly every six months.
The list will include the title, or working title, of the proposed agreement, the minister or ministers who are responsible for the agreement and some brief details of what the proposed agreement seeks to do. I anticipate that the first list will be tabled shortly after the passage of this act. The government’s other two approaches to intergovernmental agreements deal with newly signed agreements and significantly expand the range of information available compared to the present.
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