Page 1072 - Week 03 - Thursday, 26 February 2009
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Visitor, because the Official Visitor to ACT corrective institutions was also possibly appointed illegally in the run-up to the election without consultation with the outgoing legal affairs committee.
We have written to the minister and the minister has written back. Those letters have been published. But I can put on the record for those people who do not know this—people like Mr Hanson, Mr Hargreaves and the Greens’ representative who is responsible for corrections need to know this—that the Official Visitor in the ACT seems also to have been illegally appointed. This is another possible illegal appointment by this minister. But, of course, that has been hospital-passed to Mr Hargreaves. Mr Hargreaves has to fix up the mess and I get the impression that people are not quite sure how to do that. My advice to this government is to get it right and get it right very soon because we do have to deal with the issue of the Official Visitor.
The Official Visitor has a different role, but my concern is that some day something contentious is going to be happening at one of our corrections institutions—
Mr Seselja: If they are open.
MRS DUNNE: If they are open, and the Official Visitor may be prohibited from exercising his powers because there may be questions and doubt about the validity of his appointment. The government needs to get it right.
There are four appointments to three separate bodies which are in doubt. They are under a cloud. We are fixing up two to three bodies today. There is still one outstanding and this government needs to get it right. Simon Corbell stood here and said: “I have done this thousands of times. I know how to do it.” Well, he clearly does not. If he has done it thousands of times, and this was raised with me by a number of people, how many other statutory appointments are wrong? How many other statutory appointments are wrong because we have suddenly found these?
The minister says, “I wrote to the outgoing committee.” He wrote to the outgoing committee and said, “I did not consult with you.” He did not write to the outgoing committee and say, “I broke the law.” He said, “It was too inconvenient.” Essentially, he said, “I did not have time and I did not consult with you.” Yes, he did write to the outgoing committee and quite frankly the circumstances were that on the day before the election, that committee was not in a position to meet to receive those letters and do anything about it.
The committee secretary who was servicing the committee has moved on to another job. He has gone from the Assembly and it was only through the thoroughness of the incoming secretary that we are even aware of this, that we are even in a position to be in here today to do a Simon Corbell fix-up. It is testament to the thoroughness of the committee office that we are fixing this up today and all credit goes to them.
We are opposing this clause because we think that the process would be better done in the way that we asked for it to be done—that is, in separate legislation. We want to make the point we believe that separate legislation is important.
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