Page 5181 - Week 13 - Thursday, 29 November 2018
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testimony to the goodwill in this place. As others have commented and I will repeat, that stands in marked contrast to what is happening in the other parliament in this city on this very matter.
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (9.02): Members can be reassured that I do not have an amendment to the title, but it will always be ICAC to me. I, too, want to thank numerous people who have helped bring about this significant piece of legislation. To parliamentary counsel, especially Felicity, Mary, David, Anne and Karen, thank you for all the work you did behind the scenes to get these amendments ready for us. It was an exceptional effort. I also put on the record my sincere thanks to Bronwyn for all she did in putting together the Anti-Corruption and Integrity Commission Bill 2018 which we brought into this place in budget week in June of this year. Of course, we will not be going forward with that, given the pending passage of this legislation.
The staff at PCO do an amazing job; nothing is ever too hard for them. They work extremely late into the night, they work on other people’s timetables, and I am very grateful for all they do. Many of the amendments we put forward today are very significant. Others were technical but all are very important in making sure that we have the best possible integrity commission here in the ACT. I also thank the public servants and advisers from multiple directorates who devoted huge amounts of time to making sure that we were in a position to pass this by the end of the year.
I thank Janice, who helped put together the cheat sheet for today, and quite a cheat sheet it was. It was absolutely perfect. That is a pretty good effort, especially given that the amendments came in so late.
When we sat down with PCO back in February or March and we told them we wanted to draft legislation from opposition for an ICAC you could see that they were a little bit daunted. Then Ausilia presented this amazing document which pretty much laid it all out and PCO’s response was that it was exactly what they needed. It gave them a huge amount of guidance.
Ausilia has been exceptional through this process. There have been many occasions where she has had a better grasp of both pieces of legislation than sometimes the government. She is always confident; she is always thorough. She has extreme attention to detail and she has done a wonderful job in documenting not just the amendments but also many of the issues surrounding them. Thank you very much, Ausilia. The work you have done has contributed enormously to the ICAC that will be in place on 1 July next year.
Finally, I thank my colleagues, particularly Vicki, Elizabeth Lee and Giulia, for their work in driving this in the committee processes. It has been a controversial piece of legislation. There has been a lot to digest. It has not been hyper-political but it has been hyper-technical. So you cannot bank on a philosophical approach to something and ride with it; you really have to know the details, and that is exactly what Giulia, Elizabeth and Vicki mastered.
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