Page 3058 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 17 November 1992
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basis of telephone calls. I am happy to defend that practice as it stands, or at least the basis for the practice. I would also be happy to enter into discussion with members as to the way that can be improved. It is certainly not our intention to put barriers in the way of members performing their duties in advocating on behalf of the constituent. We all do that; we will all offer to write on behalf of a constituent putting forward a case for priority housing, but we would all expect that that case be examined on the merits.
In relation to the Housing Trust, that is the practice that has been put in place. It applies uniformly to opposition, independent and government members. Indeed, I make it the practice in my office also not to go down to that case level, but to channel everything through the departmental liaison officer. I can accept that the recent change in practice in the Housing Trust may have been a cause of frustration from some members. Nobody had raised that with my office, although Mr Moore, I understand, raised it with the Chief Minister, and I have determined that that is why we have done it. I would be happy to deal with any other member on that.
The general principle remains that opposition members must accept that the public service is accountable to them and to this parliament through the Assembly, through Ministers. The public service is not there to serve opposition members in relation to requests for policy advice and information in the same way that it is there to serve Ministers. It does not serve us in our personal capacity; it serves us as we represent this Assembly. I would reject an argument that this Government is being unduly secretive or unduly uncooperative in its level of access to information. It is acting in accordance with Commonwealth practice, as the Chief Minister indicated, and with what I understand to be the practice in other States. In the early days of this Assembly, at least from the time I first came in, there probably was a much higher level of contact between individual members and bureaucrats than would have applied in any other parliament. I think we are now at an appropriate level of access.
MRS CARNELL (4.21): Madam Speaker, I was very pleased, as I am sure everybody on this side of the house was, to hear Ms Follett's statements about what the proper situation should be. I do not believe that one person on this side of the house disagreed with that. Unfortunately, that is not what is happening. This Government, by adopting not their official policy but an unofficial one, is preventing all those on this side of the house from doing the job they were elected to do. Mr Cornwell appropriately said that that was disenfranchising 60 per cent of Canberra voters - the 60 per cent that did not vote for the Labor Government.
Community expectations of members of this Assembly are quite easy to spell out. They expect us to represent their interests, to respond to their concerns and to listen to them; but, more importantly, to act on their behalf. Fascinatingly, frequently that can be on something very small. Their requests, their complaints, are often very small in nature and a simple telephone call will fix them. Often all they require is for us to show them how to use the system, to pave the way for them through the quite dramatic red tape that this city has a great capacity to produce, and I suspect all bureaucratic systems are the same. A small phone call, just ringing somebody to make sure that they know how to get through the system, is all that is required.
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