Page 3896 - Week 10 - Thursday, 27 August 2009
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MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (6.16): This report is a valuable contribution to the discussion about the bill tabled by Mr Seselja. At the time the bill was tabled, I indicated that the Greens supported this bill in principle but had a number of questions about it. That is why we decided to take it to the committee.
As Mr Coe has touched on, that committee process was very valuable, because we were able to receive very helpful input from a range of experts, stakeholders and interested parties who really opened up the committee’s eyes to a number of points—some of which we were already aware of; others were new to members of the committee—and provided us with some helpful suggestions as to how some of those problems may be fixed, how areas of the bill may be improved. A lot of that information comes through in the committee’s report and no doubt will be reflected in potential amendments to the bill when it is brought back before the Assembly.
I will touch briefly on a couple of issues. Both Ms Burch and Mr Coe have already covered a lot of the substance of the report. I would like to just note a couple of points of particular interest to me.
The ACT government made a submission to the inquiry which was particularly helpful because it set out a lot of the detail and addressed many of the questions that were being raised about the original bill itself. A particularly interesting example was about a lot of early criticism from the government that the definition of “party political” was nigh on impossible. I note that on page 44 of the committee’s report the government has very helpfully provided a definition of party political which can be usefully picked up as we work through amendments to this bill in order to ensure absolute clarity. It was very helpful of the government to provide such clear answers to some of those questions that members of the Assembly found so vexing.
One of the key debates in the committee was around whether we should have an administrative model or a legislative model. Personally I prefer that the legislative model be adopted, and this is where the committee ultimately came down. I think there is too much scope for an administrative model to perhaps disappear in the government or be implemented at levels that the Assembly may not have in mind.
Having a legislative model enables the Assembly to provide the level of political direction that it wants to give. That empowers the public service, in the broad sense, to implement that political direction that the Assembly has appropriately given it. The trick now is to give the right level of legislative direction and perhaps not overprescribe the implementation. That is obviously a matter of some subjectivity; I think that as an Assembly we need to work to find the right balance there. A lot of the evidence given to us in the committee process will be very helpful in finding that balance.
Finally, I go to the last specific issue I will comment on; I will leave my further detailed comments until we debate the bill. When the bill was first tabled I did express my reservations about having the Auditor-General as the appropriate arbiter, for want of a better word, in looking at some of these models. Certainly, the Auditor-General filled out those concerns with the evidence that she and her staff gave the committee. The proposal put forward in the government submission to have a panel was a very
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