Page 3204 - Week 11 - Thursday, 13 September 1990
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The committee had no particular difficulty in deciding what should be done. For a time, the outcome could not be seen, but as we proceeded it became apparent which path should be taken.
I ask members to recall my speech yesterday on the proposal for an Assembly committee of inquiry into education. I would claim that the background to that issue is much the same, one of great disputation. But a committee of this Assembly - and the Social Policy Committee in particular - would have the ability to put that disputation behind it, to make a thorough examination and to come up with the appropriate recommendations. The work of the committee that we are now examining demonstrates that the Social Policy Committee could well have done the task that some of us sought for it yesterday.
The outcome of this committee's inquiry - the one into the proposal for an independent commission against corruption - is a modest one. It is entirely appropriate. I think it is an outstanding result, bearing in mind the difficulties we had at the outset - being in a city where there was, despite some claims, no evidence at all of any public corruption. Yet we had to provide a committee against corruption. We were not asked to say whether there should be one or not; we had to provide the framework for one.
The committee inquired everywhere. I think that the committee secretary, Karin Malmberg, did an outstanding job in locating various options from other sources. We came up with a model that is unique in Australia. We looked at elements from all over. We looked at what happened in Perth and other places - on paper; we did not go there. We adapted all the components from other places that we wanted into a fairly unique model for Canberra.
The first thing to note about it is that it is going to be very cost-effective. It is not going to be a body which is going to have its own investigatory powers and fairly substantial bureaucracy; it is not that model at all. That is good. But the thing that we will have is a body to which people can refer concerns they may have. That is really what we need. I think the proposal that the body exist and refer complaints to other existing bodies for investigation and that those investigations be monitored is excellent.
The committee came up with, I think, an ideal answer to the problem that had been presented to it. I note that the Government response - and I appreciate that response - makes a couple of changes to our recommendations, and I would agree with those changes. I think that is a further improvement to the quality of the report.
Much has been said about Mr Collaery's role in this. I think he made the point a moment ago when he spoke that there were many issues at the time which were born in haste. No doubt he regrets that he acted hastily on some
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