Page 1734 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 1 May 2012
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But that is not to say that we should rest on our laurels. Indeed, Professor Halligan notes that there is considerable potential for improving the quality of governance in a number of respects. Too often governments and parliaments only turn their minds to probity and integrity in public life in response to a clear failing outlined in the findings of a royal commission or judicial inquiry. The government believe the ACT’s foundations of integrity and probity are of sufficient importance that we should return to them and reinvigorate them on a routine basis, without the need for a crisis that forces us to. The government are prepared to look beyond the short term to reassure ourselves and reassure the community that the foundations of our system of government are sound and are appropriately adapted to the needs and demands of governing our city-state.
I note in passing that the adoption of the Latimer House principles by the Assembly as a continuing resolution flowed from the undertakings set out in our parliamentary agreement with the Greens. Those principles establish:
Each Commonwealth country’s parliaments, executives and judiciaries are the guarantors in their respective spheres of the rule of law, the promotion and protection of fundamental human rights and the entrenchment of good governance based on the highest standards of honesty, probity and accountability.
My government takes seriously its responsibilities to uphold those high standards. I also note the Latimer House principles require us to develop, adopt and periodically review appropriate guidelines for ethical conduct.
I now want to outline a number of initiatives I have commissioned not in response to a crisis of confidence but as a deliberate program designed to reinforce and enhance the foundation of integrity and probity for our system of government in the ACT. When I made my statement to the Assembly about open government in June 2011, I suggested it rested on three principles: transparency in processing information, participation by citizens in the governing process, and public collaboration in finding solutions to problems and participation in the improved wellbeing of the community. A reinvigorated focus on probity and integrity in the operations of the ACT government and the ACT public service supports this initiative because the genuinely collaborative approaches to decision making that involve the citizenry in program and policy design and delivery rest on a foundation of trust.
If we are to get the most out of those new approaches, we must ensure that there is trust on all sides in the processes and the institutions of government. We must ensure that there is an acceptance within the government and the bureaucracy, and between the government and the community, that our interactions will be honourable, our decisions will be fair and that we will consistently seek not only to do the right thing but that we also seek to do it in the right way.
It is important that in discussing the standards of behaviour we should expect, to which we hold ourselves accountable and to which we invite others to hold us accountable, we move beyond nice words to concrete action. As was outlined by Dr Allan Hawke in his review of the ACT public sector, however, we should not
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