Page 1997 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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As I said, in terms of those other agencies, we are prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to the government; we do not have a huge problem. But these three particular agencies are fatal in respect of this bill. We just do not think it is going to work. We think that this bill is the wrong way to go. Far from saving money, it will probably end up costing the community more money in the long run.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (8.24): There are a number of issues about the kinds of structural change that the government is proposing that I want to raise today. Some of them were raised in the scrutiny of bills report, and I trust that there has been time to absorb those. The scrutiny of bills report indicates that there are issues in regard to human rights that should have been considered in the development of the explanatory statement because there are issues around privacy in the moving of records. Given that we have a Human Rights Act, we should apply it. Secondly, a concern was raised about a strict liability offence that is listed without an explanation for it. It may well be justified, but the general concern was that the old bill was adapted here but without taking into account the fact that, since that bill was written, we have developed a Human Rights Act.
One thing that governments do quite regularly is restructure their bureaucracies. Perhaps that is one way that a new government can imprint itself on the organisation of things that it is meant to take responsibility for. In this case the stated reason for the restructure is to save money. There are a lot of concerns about that. I am concerned about the absorption of the Health Promotion Authority, for many of the same reasons that Mr Stefaniak gave. I think it performs a unique function. It certainly involves community organisations and thus brings in innovative practices that a bureaucracy cannot. The other thing is that small amounts of money are spent for very great effect.
I know less about tourism. I am sure that tourism has enjoyed being a separate commission. I certainly do not think that handing over the job to the commonwealth is a satisfactory way to go, because we do not have any control over those promotions. It also undervalues our territory. I do not think the federal government will be promoting, for instance, our nature reserves, our national parks and such things.
I now refer to emergency services and the resignation of the commissioner, for whatever reason. I always think that there are probably more reasons than the ones that are publicly stated, but I would say that part of the reason for his resignation would be that he saw something being changed when he was not really given a role in the decisions about that change. I expect that if you were the commissioner of a department, you would like to have some say in what happens to it.
I mentioned in my speech on the budget that the environment department in the ACT has had several changes over the last two years and that that has been very confusing for the people who work there, and to some extent for the public, because they probably have not been able to keep up with all the name changes and ministerial changes.
The ACT is unique because it is positioned alongside a rather larger public service employer, the commonwealth. We are very well aware that we have a lot of leakage from our public service to the commonwealth public service. Therefore, we have to make a special effort to keep our very best public servants. How do we do that? I fear that the budget is eroding the conditions that they might have had. The superannuation changes
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