Page 3417 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 September 1990
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Other members of the Government will speak on the appropriateness of the standing committee that the Leader of the Opposition has chosen. At this stage, I think it is sufficient for me to say that I think it is the wrong mechanism, and I will explain why.
First, in my view, there are very real and major potential problems in establishing a committee along the lines that Ms Follett proposes. I will mention some issues that come to mind and which would, I imagine, be looked at closely by the community. First of all, there is the idea of a committee being responsible "for promoting the value of ethical behaviour amongst all Members and to the community from which they were elected".
That sounds to me like people setting themselves up as being a little bit holier than thou - and it is typical, of course, of the conservative Opposition in this Assembly. I need to point out, I think, that in other matters, not only in the ACT but elsewhere throughout Australia, the Labor Party treats anyone else taking this position that "We are better judges of your behaviour than you are" as being reactionary and of the far right. Yet here we have in this Assembly the Labor Opposition putting forward the proposition that it is better able to judge the value of behaviour ethics.
Ms Follett: No, I am not saying we can - the committee.
MR KAINE: It is your idea; it is your committee, and you think you are better able to make these judgments than the people themselves are.
Secondly, Mr Speaker, in a small Assembly such as this - we are talking about five members out of 17 - there is always the possibility that some member of the committee may himself or herself be the subject of an investigation or at least have a conflict of interest in any investigation that is taking place. So, when we start setting up codes of ethics and telling people how they should behave, we should consider the impact of that on all the members of the Assembly and particularly the members of the committee itself.
The draft code talks about being "... dedicated to the highest ideals of honour and integrity in all public and personal relationships ...". It sounds to me like some members of this Assembly wanted to get into other people's bedrooms. I repeat that anywhere else in Australia where this kind of thing is put forward the proponents are dealt with by the Labor Party as though they are of the far right to dare to suggest that any such thing would occur. When you start to talk about personal relationships you are going way beyond what anybody would see as being reasonable.
Mr Berry: You are going into a panic over something.
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