Page 234 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 December 2008
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Another aspect was:
Endorse the Commonwealth (Latimer House) Principles on the Three Branches of government…
I will quote from that. It is:
…the entrenchment of good governance based on the highest standards of honest probity and accountability…
Further, the agreement talks of:
Higher standards of accountability, transparency and responsibility in the conduct of all public business;
So it is not just stuff that is behind closed doors; it is all public business.
In terms of committees:
To bring about a new role for Committees and Committee Chairpersons, recognising the Committee system of the Legislative Assembly is a vital tool in providing oversight and scrutiny…
So, again, we need the scrutiny. I continue:
Assembly Committees to perform a dual role, being scrutiny of Executive decision making, and collaboration with the Executive…
What we see here is a government that is hiding the documents that have informed so many of their important decisions, decisions that are impacting on the lives of Canberrans now. Schools have been closed and, as we said, bills have been rushed through the Assembly.
So what we have is a situation of the reality versus the rhetoric. We see the words put forward, the agreements put forward, the debate put forward in the election and in this Assembly from the crossbench but then we see the reality. We saw that reality with the appropriation bill and the motion that was put forward by the shadow treasurer, Mr Smyth, wanting to have more scrutiny, more accountability of the appropriation bill.
Initially, the government tried to block the debate. Before we even had the debate about that motion, they tried to block it. Interestingly, the crossbench, in the interests of accountability, had obviously already made their decision but only allowed that debate to occur on the understanding that they had already made the decision that they would not be supporting the debate. So, in this case, clearly, a decision had been made behind closed doors and not in the Assembly. We were not going to be listening to the debate and, indeed, it was not long after that that the debate was actually gagged.
On day one, we heard a lot of rhetoric, a lot of good intent, but, when it came to the test, whether we were going to have more accountability and scrutinise this
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