Page 3198 - Week 11 - Thursday, 13 September 1990
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course, has a lot to say occasionally on issues of this nature and then, more often than not, says something different at a future time.
The background to the creation of an independent committee against corruption is simply that the ACT has followed the trend elsewhere in Australia in ensuring that there is a third body, as it were, in the community - an interface body - that can deal with issues of this kind. The need for such a body is well established elsewhere in Australian society, and there is no reason why the ACT should stand alone and separate from those current developments.
The Opposition is attempting to put some dramatic basis to the introduction of this legislation. Mrs Grassby, in her comments on 14 August, suggested something sinister in the delay by the Government. The fact is that we have looked very carefully at this issue. We followed carefully the legal developments, particularly of the ICAC in New South Wales where there have been significant court findings and specifically a most significant Court of Appeal finding in relation to the proper separation of powers in relation to the judicial or quasi-judicial functions of such a body.
As members would be aware, the New South Wales Court of Appeal held, at an important juncture of the discursive stage for this Government, that the corruption bodies - in particular, the one in New South Wales - should not make findings of guilt because that transgressed a separation of powers doctrine dealing with the role of the judiciary, to put it simply. They were issues that we followed with interest, and certainly the Government now sees its way clear to undertaking effective legislative drafting and preparing a proper Bill for consideration soon by this Assembly.
Like many things prior to self-government, many of the issues in the Legislative Assembly elections were born in haste and produced in haste. Certainly, there has been a lot of rhetoric on a lot of issues. It is very interesting to hear the Leader of the Opposition say that we do not need a royal commission or an inquiry into the building industry because, inferentially, there is nothing corrupt going on in it. That, itself, is a presumption - an assumption - that the Leader of the Opposition is prepared to make.
Mr Berry: Where is the evidence?
MR COLLAERY: I am not prepared to make any assumptions in that regard, and I believe it ill behoves a member of this Assembly to make assumptions either way on issues of this nature. So, the response to Mr Berry, of course, is that his own leader has made a very prejudicial and prejudgmental statement today in this Assembly. That, of course, will be widely reported and may well hang about her in the future.
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