Page 2536 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011

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Our efforts in pursuit of these goals will be buttressed by an enhanced focus on ensuring the ACT public service workforce has the right skills, capabilities and capacity to deliver what the government and the community ask of it. They will be enhanced by a greater focus, under the head of service, on proactively managing and developing the ACT public service workforce over time.

As I indicated earlier, these formalise the single agency structure for the ACT public service that will be central to its capacity to continue to provide high quality services to the people of Canberra and advice and support to the government of the day.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the staff of the Chief Minister and Cabinet Directorate who have worked very hard on getting these bills together and on working on the details since the government announced these changes. I would also like to thank members for agreeing to treat these bills as urgent and work with the government over the last couple of days to deal with the briefings that have been required. I really genuinely do appreciate it.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill agreed to in principle.

Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.

Bill agreed to.

Administrative (One ACT Public Service Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2011

Debate resumed.

MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (11.48): As Ms Hunter indicated, the Greens are in support of the Hawke reforms and the subsequent amendments. However, I would like to draw the Assembly’s attention to page 184 of the Hawke report where he states:

The operation of these sections of the Planning Act mean that legislative change will likely to be necessary to implement fully either of the options proposed below. Alternative approaches involving a combination of Ministerial Directions, Cabinet processes, administrative coordination processes and, in effect, “outposting” ACTPLA staff might be undertaken in the interim, but this approach is not preferred. They are administratively complex and do not engage the fundamental and underlying rigidities in the Planning Act. Nor do they serve to reinforce the line of delineation between independent decision making on Development Applications and matters of Government policy.

The reason I draw the Assembly’s attention to this is that the Greens think that there is an appropriate role for politics in planning. I will miss Mr Barr’s commentary on this. We have debated at length that the role for politics in planning is in policy; it is not in DAs. I think it is important that with the administrative changes we continue to have


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