Page 21 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 22 February 1994
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In my December statement I said that we expected to achieve a separate service by 1994. That remains my expectation. I have said that since I do not expect the necessary legislation to be passed by this Assembly until February 1994 ...
Well, this is February 1994. It is almost over. The Chief Minister referred to this matter in her speech today, but she did not mention any target for tabling the legislation. How does she expect to have the legislation in place to put a new public service in place on 1 July when she has not yet even tabled the legislation that would put it into effect? I presume that she expects to bludgeon that legislation through this Assembly, over everybody's objections if they do not like it, and put the public service into place on 1 July so that she can say that she met her target. There has been no urgency, and the Chief Minister, even today, exhibits no sense of urgency in this matter.
The point is, Madam Speaker, that, after a period of five years in which people have had a long time to think about this, it is a one-off opportunity for some beneficial change in the way things are done in the Territory; but in order to achieve that beneficial change a few things are required. The first thing that is required is some direction on this matter, some direction that involves innovation, some vision and some will for change, and there has been no demonstration of any one of those three things in anything that the Chief Minister has said or done up until today.
It is clear that the mundane minds of the members of the Follett maladministration have failed totally to grasp the potential, because there is no evidence of innovation, there is no evidence of vision and there is certainly no evidence of will for change, and I will discuss these matters over the next few minutes. Unfortunately, it seems that Ms Follett has lost the plot. She has let the opportunities pass her by. She has had months, in fact years, to think about this and has done nothing. Ms Follett has left the exercise entirely in the hands of her public service and has failed to provide any direction whatsoever that might have exhibited these attributes of innovation, vision and a will for change. What we see, in consequence, is an exercise that concentrates and focuses entirely on the mechanics of the public service itself and the arrangements within which our public service employees will function. Major emphasis is on the rights of the participants.
I must say that this exercise, so far as it goes, represents a job well done by the public servants concerned. It is a great tribute, I think, that they have been able to achieve this with absolutely no input whatsoever from the political level.
Ms Follett: The same maladministrators?
Mr Connolly: Ha, ha!
MR KAINE: You can chuckle, because I will come to this in a minute. The Chief Minister has made no contribution over the last one-and-a-half years, other than making three speeches on the issue. That was her only contribution. Two of them were made in this Assembly - one in December 1992 and one in May last year - and the third one was made in a public service forum within the last few days. They were the only three public statements made by the Chief Minister on this major question in a one-and-a-half-year period.
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