Page 3440 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 September 1990
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proven but which were publicly aired. I believe that body is now being very circumspect about the number of public hearings it has at first level with initial allegations. I believe that the motion by Ms Follett needs to be tidied up in the interests of civil liberties.
Also I have reservations about what the Leader of the Opposition means about personal relationships. Other people have covered that. But clearly we cannot allow this committee - in another time, in another place, perhaps run in another political atmosphere - to use improperly this machinery that the Leader of the Opposition would set up to, as my colleague Mr Stefaniak says, bring us back to McCarthyism, or forward - please God, no - to Fred Nile-type moral campaigning.
This motion needs to be examined by the Administration and Procedures Committee before it comes back to this house. In that respect, I am encouraged by the tortuous trip that such a proposal had in the Federal Parliament. I refer to what is known as the Bowen Committee of Inquiry into Public Duty and Private Interest more than 10 years ago.
I draw members' attention, without quoting, to the speech in the House of Representatives on 4 June 1981 by Mr Lionel Bowen where he traverses and sets out in very good order the history of proposals that we have an ethics committee in an Australian parliamentary context. He refers to a question which he believes has never been properly answered, even by such notables as Sir Garfield Barwick, as to what is a pecuniary interest. It is an interesting speech and I enjoin all members to read Lionel Bowen's speech in the House of Representatives on 4 June 1981.
That issue resulted in our public servants being obliged in many instances to agree to what is called a Bowen undertaking - and that comes from the report of the Bowen Committee, the committee that was chaired by Sir Nigel Bowen, and others. So there has been progress in that regard. But sadly, as a document of early this year relates, the situation throughout the Australian parliamentary structure on committees of ethics in the parliament is as follows: in the Commonwealth there are no committees to consider parliamentary ethics or related matters. Committees on members' interests, matters of privilege and matters of procedure appear to be the nearest equivalents in the Federal Parliament.
In New South Wales there is a code of conduct for local government which has been issued by the Minister for Local Government. It is countersigned by Ian Temby and represents, in my view, the state of the art in terms of what I believe the Leader of the Opposition is seeking. I propose to table that document for the interest of members and, hopefully, when the procedural motion is put, that could be the starting point for the structures proposed by the Leader of the Opposition.
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