Page 361 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
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into inquiring into appropriate mechanisms to coordinate and evaluate the implementation of the Latimer House principles. Given that the Latimer House principles also cover the relationship of parliament with the judiciary and civil society, such an inquiry would also provide an opportunity for the legal community and interested members of our community to comment on how well the Latimer House principles currently apply from their perspective.
It is important to include evaluation of progress in the work of this committee. Such evaluation is occurring at the commonwealth level. The 10th anniversary of the Latimer House guidelines was marked at the colloquium seminar or conference in the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh in July 2008 ahead of the commonwealth law ministers meeting. The colloquium examined the level of awareness and the implementation of the commonwealth Latimer House principles in various member countries and also considered the practical problems which arise with respect to preserving the independence of the judiciary and parliament, gender and ethical issues, accountability mechanisms and examples of good practice.
A plan of action was released at the 2008 Edinburgh meeting which was designed to assist commonwealth countries to develop, promote and implement the Latimer House principles. I recommend this Edinburgh plan of action to members of this place and, if the Greens’ motion to refer the implementation and monitoring of the Latimer House principles to the Standing Committee on Administration and Procedure is supported, I believe the plan of action would be a useful document for the committee in its work. I seek leave to table the Edinburgh plan of action.
Leave granted.
MS HUNTER: I table the following paper:
Latimer House Principles—Copy of the Edinburgh Plan of Action for the Commonwealth, dated 7 July 2008.
Recommendations of this plan include that the commonwealth secretariat should collate information and report on the implementation of the principles as well as promote pre-review of compliance. The ACT Legislative Assembly can be a model for other Australian jurisdictions in this regard and show leadership not only in Australia but in our region and throughout the commonwealth. I commend this motion to the Assembly.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (4.07): We are very happy to support the motion. As I flagged earlier in the discussion about the Latimer House principles, I think in the broad they are principles that all of us agree on, as was reflected in the vote. The real work will now come in determining how they are applied in practice. That will be the job of the Standing Committee on Administration and Procedure. We believe that is a very important role.
As I flagged before, we have a situation where many of these principles were developed in particular for fledgling democracies. There is indeed a large focus on judicial activism, and particularly on interpreting bills of rights. We do have some concerns around that but we understand the framework in which this was put in.
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