Page 1567 - Week 04 - Thursday, 25 March 2010
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Tuggeranong data centre. Even on Tuesday, just a couple of days ago, in the planning and public works and territory and municipal services committee annual report document, recommendation 9 reads:
The Committee recommends that the Department of Territory and Municipal Services and the ACT Planning and Land Authority coordinate their public consultation processes where an obvious cross over exists.
This goes to the heart of the issue. You have different empires throughout this government. You have different empires in cabinet and you have different empires in the bureaucracy. Because of that Canberrans are suffering. We do not have transparency, we do not have openness and we do not have an accountable government. We on this side of the chamber will do all we can to hold this government to account. But part of that rests on the government to make sure that there is information available. That is why Mrs Dunne moved and we passed the FOI legislation. That is why we will continue to do all we can to ensure that the people of Canberra have all the information they can possibly get their hands on so that we can accurately and fairly evaluate this government and its atrocious record of delivering services to Canberrans.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Land and Property Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (4.19): I welcome the opportunity today to speak on this matter of public importance. Openness and accountability in government are the foundations of trust and respect and perhaps in no parliament in the country is openness so pronounced and accountability so great as in this parliament, with its unique nature of parliament where minority government is the rule rather than the exception and where we live in such intimate contact with the community we serve.
In the past year a number of extra efforts have been made to improve openness and accountability. I turn first to those arising from the parliamentary agreement between Labor and the Greens party. A major element of that agreement related to reforms of the parliamentary system. In total, there were 44 commitments on parliamentary reform agreed to on 31 October 2008.
Since making the agreement we have met every four months, reviewed progress and, more recently, the commitments themselves. Joint communiques are issued to publicly gauge progress against the commitments and to demonstrate the effective working relationship between this government and the Greens in relation to the agreement. The implementation of these parliamentary reforms contributes to a more open, honest and accountable government.
There has been some debate in recent times regarding the Assembly’s ability to ask questions on the parliamentary agreement and I support the Speaker’s position in regard to his recent rulings. And I note today, from the Hansard, that it is a position that was first espoused in this place by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Mr Brendan Smyth. So it is interesting that the Speaker’s rulings are entirely, 100 per cent consistent with the position first proposed in this place by the Liberal Party.
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