Page 35 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 February 2016
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As individuals can act as multiple members of the commission, individuals will be appointed to multiple commissioner positions within the commission. It is important to note that the government has decided that, because of the nature of changes to the structure, and the policy decision to link specific members of the commission under single appointments, it would be appropriate to commence a full public recruitment process for appointment to the positions.
That recruitment process commenced in December last year, noting that appointments to the newly reconfigured positions are contingent on the passage of the legislation before the Assembly today. The recruitment process is well underway and there has been a strong field of candidates submitting expressions of interest to be appointed to the new statutory offices. The government anticipates that the appointments will be finalised in early March, ahead of the commencement of the new structure.
Consequent on the establishment of the position of president of the commission, a number of the functions that were previously functions of the commission have been transferred to the president. These functions have been relocated to facilitate the effective and efficient leadership of the commission.
The functions of the president are set out in new section 18 of the act, and include managing the administration of the commission; the efficient and effective financial management of the commission’s resources; ensuring the commission’s functions are exercised in an orderly and prompt way; developing a governance and corporate support protocol in accordance with section 18A; developing a client service charter; developing an operations protocol; and ensuring, as far as practicable, the commission’s functions are exercised in a way that takes account of, and is consistent with, the governance and corporate support protocol, the client service charter and the operations protocol.
This provides for greater accountability of the commission’s functions, empowers the president to provide agile and flexible leadership of the commission and will reorient the commission to act as a single agency delivering many rights protection services cohesively and consistently.
The intention is to empower the president to drive the work of the commission, reallocating the administrative and managerial tasks from individual commissioners, who will then be able to focus on their core service delivery functions. Other systemic, high level and strategic functions will also be shifted to the president so that the work of the commission has a broader focus and represents the position of the commission as a whole rather than being produced from specific, individual commissioner perspectives. This is exactly the way that the Australian Human Rights Commission currently operates.
The aim is to support commissioners to collaborate across areas of expertise to deliver more coordinated and cohesive systemic work as recommended by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts Review of Auditor-General’s report No. 1 of 2013: Care and protection system.
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