Page 3519 - Week 11 - Thursday, 14 October 1993
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and so on, and, secondly, by the Chief Minister in relation to the restructuring exercises that are occurring, and will continue to occur, in a cooperative fashion with the trade union movement and the ACT administration. It had been my hope, when this select committee was first announced, that we would be able, in a cooperative and bipartisan way, to recommend to the Government ways in which the process towards a separate public service could be enhanced.
I believed that Ms Szuty, the current Deputy Leader of the Opposition and I would be able, in a cooperative fashion, to assist in this process. But, as I have said, it is fairly obvious that Mr De Domenico either is deliberately choosing to misrepresent what he is being told or simply does not understand it. That obviously will make the work of the committee far more difficult. I am aware that Ms Szuty understands the normal industrial practices and procedures outlined by the Minister and how they will continue, and the basis upon which they have been negotiated; but it is fairly obvious that Mr De Domenico does not.
In reality, the issue that Mr De Domenico addressed, the difficult nature of progression towards our own separate public service, is indeed a difficult process; but it is made more so by Mr De Domenico's lack of knowledge about these issues. I certainly hope, Madam Speaker, that that lack of knowledge and lack of understanding, and his inability to come to grips with these issues, do not prevent the committee from reporting on the due date. I am confident that Ms Szuty and I will be able to come to grips with these issues within that timeframe, and I certainly hope that Mr De Domenico's lack of understanding does not inhibit the committee in its consideration in any shape or form.
MR KAINE (4.25): Madam Speaker, I will be fairly brief. There is one thing that concerns me greatly about the directions that are being followed in this matter of defining where we are going in the establishment of our own ACT public service. I have read the submission that was put by the Government to the select committee and I must say that there are some excellent papers in this document. I read them with great interest. The authors, whoever they are, I believe, are to be commended. The papers are excellent as far as they go; but the thing that is missing, Madam Speaker, is some form of direction from the Government as to what it wants. These papers point out the history of the present organisation. It evolved from the Commonwealth. We inherited various organisational elements from a number of different departments that were brought together. In fact they even say in one place here that we inherited the remnants of a colonial administration. The problem is that four years downstream we really have not shed that. We still have essentially the same organisation that we inherited from the Commonwealth, with all its colonial administration characteristics. It was not designed to do the job that this Assembly and this Government may require it to do.
I say that these papers are excellent because they deal with the internal dynamics of the organisation, the way our public servants see the system working internally. It is good material, and it is good for us to reflect on the way the system might work; but the first decision has to be on what sort of an organisation we are going to have. Then the material that is in here begins to bear, because these are the dynamics of the way the system works, the interrelationships within the organisation, and its relationships with the external environment. One can argue that it is a cybernetic system which both influences
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