Page 3415 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 September 1990
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I believe that the Labor Party has taken the lead in the Assembly in attempting to establish and to promote standards which will enable the public to have confidence in the Assembly and in its individual members.
At the first ACT election, we promised to introduce a requirement for declaration of pecuniary interests by Assembly members, and I was pleased to be able to do that as one of my first actions in this Assembly just over a year ago.
Mr Jensen: With bipartisan support.
MS FOLLETT: And, indeed, as Mr Jensen says, it had bipartisan support at that time. I trust that there will also be bipartisan support for this further action.
I have also spoken about the responsibilities of a Minister to observe certain standards and, of course, high standards of behaviour should apply to members of any legislature. The community is entitled to expect that members of this Assembly will maintain the highest standards of honesty, integrity and respect for the law. Indeed, several members have pointed out in debates over the past few months that those who make or administer the laws have a special responsibility, because nobody can expect that the law will be observed or respected by the public if it is made or implemented by people who do not respect it themselves. But the standards which should be observed by Assembly members, I believe, go far beyond the simple observance of the law. The principles of honesty, integrity, and acting in the public rather than the personal interest are a key to a system of government which will command the confidence of the people.
My motion today proposes that a standing committee on ethics be established to consider matters which are either referred by the Assembly or which the committee considers to be of concern to the community. That committee would have a continuing role for promoting the value of ethical behaviour amongst members of this Assembly and in the community from which we have all been elected.
As a first step the motion would require the new committee to report to this Assembly on an appropriate code of ethics for the Assembly to adopt. In the motion, the date for reporting is, in fact, the end of September. I believe that is probably not achievable at this stage; so we would probably need to consider amending that to a more realistic date. The motion also requires that the committee consider and report on ways in which the public may raise any alleged breaches of the code of ethics and what action should be taken in relation to such breaches.
In order to stimulate debate and to indicate the kind of scope of a code of ethics, I have included in the motion a draft code which the committee might want to consider.
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