Page 1737 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 1 May 2012
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The proposed reforms are organised around the following principles: genuine public interest disclosures should be encouraged and facilitated by the legislative framework; those who make genuine disclosures should be protected from reprisals; if a disclosure is genuine, then it is in the public interest that the findings of any investigation are made public; purely internal and individual ACT public service employment-related complaints and grievances will rarely constitute public interest disclosures and are better handled in other processes; and complainants are entitled to be briefed, confidentially if necessary, on the outcomes of their complaint.
This new legislation will be supported by revised administrative procedures for handling disclosures of this sort that reflect the findings of whistling while they work. The consultation period for the exposure draft ended on 26 March 2012. Submissions are being considered for possible improvements to the bill, including a substantial contribution from the authors of the whistling while they work project. They have praised the direction of the exposure draft and are working with the government to ensure the resulting legislation reflects best practice. I plan to introduce the new public interest disclosure legislation prior to the Assembly rising for the 2012 election.
Just as it was timely 21 years after self-government to review how the capability, capacity and effectiveness of the ACT public service might be enhanced, it is now timely that we now turn our minds to how the ethical and probity framework underpinning the ACT’s system of governance might be enhanced and better tailored to the realities of our city-state government. The government remains committed to the high standards of public administration in the ACT. In our view, this must be based on the highest standards of probity and integrity in public life, and the initiatives I have outlined today will assist all of us in demonstrating those standards in our daily work.
I move:
That the Assembly takes note of the paper.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (4.31): Given the events of today, and when we consider some of the other events that we have seen occur in this place, particularly in relation to the bullying at the Canberra Hospital, it is relevant that we discuss this issue. The paper that Ms Gallagher just tabled with the code of conduct states:
It is important … 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, that we move beyond nice words to concrete action.
That gives me cause to reflect back to the incident that occurred when there was bullying at the Canberra Hospital and what concrete action the minister took at that point. The concrete action that she took was initially to deny that any complaints had been made, before investigating that properly, and to make every endeavour to prevent an investigation from occurring, particularly one that would have resulted in an open assessment on what had occurred. She attacked the doctors who made the complaints. She did so by supporting the then Chief Minister in threatening to take
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