Page 3648 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 20 October 1993
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MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, I have been quite consistent. I have maintained that it is very important for governments to protect people who blow whistles, whistle-blowers. I might indicate that my party has indicated strong support for whistle-blowers legislation. Indeed, as I understand it, it is presently in the process of preparing whistle-blowers legislation to present before this Assembly. There is no question but that we will protect people who legitimately raise certain issues in the appropriate fashion and the appropriate way and will organise for those issues to come into the public light.
It is one thing to give people who raise issues in that way proper protection. It is quite another to repeal offences that deal with a proper responsibility of public servants to their offices and to the duties that they hold as public servants. Section 10 of this Act says:
A person who ... publishes or communicates ... any fact or document which comes to his or her knowledge ... by virtue of him or her being an officer of the Territory and which it is his or her duty not to disclose, is guilty of an offence punishable, on conviction, by imprisonment for a period not exceeding 2 years.
There might be some argument about that being too harsh, about whether it is too draconian. There might be some issue about whether the circumstances under which knowledge can be imparted reasonably ought to be modified, but I certainly think it is quite wrong to suggest that officers of the ACT Government ought to have no responsibility to maintain the discretion which, I am sure we would all agree, the vast majority of officers of the ACT Government have exercised for some time. Section 11 is even more significant. It says:
A person who steals, fraudulently misappropriates or fraudulently converts to his or her own use any property belonging to the Territory ... is guilty of an offence ...
Mr Moore: They are guilty of an offence anyway, under the Crimes Act.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Moore points out that there are provisions in the Crimes Act which deal with that particular offence, and that is quite true; but, Madam Speaker, that does not ignore the need for a document such as this, the Crimes (Offences Against the Government) Act, to appropriately contain a concise set of the duties which public servants face and which we would hope they would all exercise in the course of their duty. Mr Moore might say that we can cover this in other ways, but it seems to me that it is appropriate to cover it here in a statute entitled Crimes (Offences Against the Government) Act.
Madam Speaker, as I have indicated, this is a response to an important issue, but I do not think it is the right response. I think that we can deal with issues of this kind by examining the question of whistle-blowers in the community, and my party is doing just that. It is quite another thing to suggest that we should abandon all the standards which we have built up over a period, also by tradition, apart from anything else, that deal with the responsibilities of public servants. That is what Mr Moore would propose that we would do. It is not what our party would support.
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