Page 4570 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 14 December 1993
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Mr Connolly: Politicising the public service.
MR BERRY: Indeed, politicising of the public service emerges very strongly. The best person selected for the position may well be discarded by the Assembly. Quite easily, in a fit of pique, the Assembly might well do it. I do not think this has been very well thought through, but it will make a nice headline out there. You can get a quick headline on this one, and that is all that matters, I suppose, when you are in opposition. As I have said, the best person could be discarded. The paperwork of the selection process is confidential - you could not get your little hands on it - and the process would not be open for the Assembly to review. Therefore, Mr Deputy Speaker, I oppose the amendment. It very clearly allows a very unfair process of review to be conducted in a very public way by the likes of those in the Opposition, and who would want that?
MRS CARNELL (Leader of the Opposition) (8.46): Very briefly, Mr Deputy Speaker, we will be supporting Mr Moore's amendment. The Commissioner for Health Complaints is a statutory office. It is supposed to be totally independent from the Minister and from ACT Health. I think that Mr Moore's amendment makes sure that that will be the case.
MR MOORE (8.46): It is interesting, Mr Deputy Speaker, to hear this political doublespeak from Mr Berry. He says that this will politicise the process in some way. When you are talking about politicising the process, we have a political party in government and it makes this appointment. The Executive may, by instrument, appoint a person to be Commissioner for Health Complaints. It is quite clear who is going to make the appointment under this legislation. My amendment says, "Yes, the Executive may appoint that person, but such an appointment will be reviewable by this Assembly". If this Assembly wishes to review the whole process of the appointment it can do that as well.
Mr Berry: No, it cannot. It is not available to you.
MR MOORE: Mr Berry interjects that it is not available to us. Of course it is available to us. If we wish to change the legislation and make it available to us, it will be available to us. That is the reality. In this case we are looking for a sensible way to proceed.
The other bit of political doublespeak we heard from Mr Berry was when he was talking about my being interested in empowerment. That certainly is a concern for Mr Berry. I can understand that because it does mean a very small transfer of power, in a final decision, from the Executive to the Assembly as a whole. Perhaps there is an issue there, not of empowerment from my perspective but of a loss of final say from Mr Berry's perspective. The reality is that where this system has been used up until now it has been an amicable process, and I think it will continue to be so. If Mr Berry wishes to continue with it in that way, I suggest that he speak to Mr Wood and find out how to go about it.
MR BERRY (Minister for Health, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (8.48): I noted Mr Moore's twisty-speak but - - -
Mr Moore: Whichy-speak?
MR BERRY: Twisty. He is trying to avoid the real issue. This is very clearly a politicisation of the process and it will have the effect of worrying people who might apply for these sorts of positions here in the ACT. There is no
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