Page 3895 - Week 10 - Thursday, 27 August 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Recommendation 2 is an important one. It calls for a legislative framework. We considered both a regulatory framework and a legislative one. The legislative framework, in addition to other guidelines, was proposed by the committee.
The committee discussed whether we should send relevant advertising decisions to the Auditor-General or to an independent expert panel. Personally, I still see some merit in going to the Auditor-General, but I do see merit also in the independent expert panel, and that is something that I am sure the opposition will consider.
Recommendation 4 is an important one. It talks about the appointment of appointees of a proposed independent expert panel being done by a disallowable instrument. That will mean that this Assembly has the ability to amend that disallowable instrument and to make sure that the best people are going to that job.
Mr Hargreaves: You cannot amend an instrument; you have to kill it.
MR COE: Mr Hargreaves may interject and say that you are not allowed to amend a disallowable instrument, but that is not actually true. You can amend a disallowable instrument; you just cannot amend a disallowable instrument that has a money relationship.
Recommendation 5 is another very important one. It brings about the inclusion of production and development costs into the total costs when calculating the cost of a government advertising campaign. That is where the production and development costs are easily identifiable and attributable. That is very important. It is important that we get that sort of investment into a campaign included in the overall spend.
Recommendations 6 and 7 are quite clear, but recommendation 8 needs a little bit more thought by this committee. That is that we need to clarify what the prohibition period is before the election. That rolls onto recommendation 10, that this Assembly still does need to work out what that blackout period is for an election in terms of government advertising.
I want to go very briefly to recommendation 13, on territory-owned corporations. The territory-owned corporations have a unique position in terms of companies that exist and operate here in the territory. They are fully owned by the ACT government. They have two shareholders, the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister. Because of that special position they have in the market and because of that control that the ACT government does have through being the shareholders and through the Territory-owned Corporations Act 1990, I believe that, through that act, we actually have the ability to put such restrictions or processes in place as to how they operate. That is a very worthy recommendation that should be taken on board.
I would like to extend my thanks to Mr Rattenbury and Ms Burch, my fellow committee members, for their commitment to this process. It is a process that I thought was quite stimulating—very interesting subject matter—and something that I hope this Assembly takes on board when drafting or redrafting this legislation.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .