Page 2165 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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The Director of Public Prosecutions and the Legal Aid Office have argued similarly that they need to operate outside this framework, in a different environment; that they need to operate within the legal mores. They are serving not so much Government objectives as those of the clients in their particular groups. That is why they need to have that kind of basis of operation. Fair enough again. Some exemptions have already been provided for in the legislation itself - the Fire Brigade, for example.
When you look at all those things, though, Madam Speaker, the question springs to mind: What characteristics of the ACT public service which is being created with this legislation are so invidious that they need to be escaped from? What is it that people are trying to get away from? The answer, it seems to me, is the heavy hand of centralism and proceduralism, the central imposition of restrictions, rules, procedures and chains of command that are designed primarily to cover the backsides of the people who are involved and responsible for those chains of commands, rather than a flexible response to the changing needs of the client base which this whole public service is meant to respond to. There is pitifully little mention in this legislation - or in this debate, for that matter - of the clients, the people of the ACT whom this public service is meant to serve.
I am appalled by the extent to which this whole document, this whole framework, is inward looking. It is all about the Government, not about the service part of the whole exercise. Nothing so dominates one's impression of this Bill as the impression that it is all about meeting the needs not of clients but of the service itself. Are all the provisions outlined in this legislation, for example, really necessary to achieve that responsive attitude towards the client base? So onerous is it in that respect that various segments of the public service seem to want to get out of it rather than get under it for protection or for some other benefit.
Mr Moore places great store in the importance of getting a separate public service ahead of necessarily getting all the structures right to begin with. That is an argument which, on the face of it, seems to have some acceptability. He wants to get the thing, and then work out the details afterwards. But, if we look at that argument a bit more closely, we see that there are some serious problems. Surely the primary goal must be to maintain a service of excellence, whether it is to be officially separate from, or attached to, the Commonwealth Public Service. Surely the issue is not where it actually falls or where it is located but what it does and how it is structured. Surely that is the essential and important question. Unfortunately, Mr Moore's approach forces us to choose between those two things - having a separate public service and having a very good framework for that public service. I do not think that by passing the legislation at this stage we are actually going to achieve a service of excellence. There are so many problems, as exhibited by the many submissions made to the committee that Mr Kaine chaired, that we really have to ask ourselves whether we have achieved what we have set out to achieve.
The other problem which Mr Moore's approach fails to acknowledge is that the Government itself does not want to change this Bill, notwithstanding the 109 amendments which are before the house and the possibility of more next week. Mr Moore hopes to fix up these problems with the structures later on, but I think it is fair to say that the Government will not be necessarily cooperating very much in that process. It is happy with what it has at the moment, apparently, with a few little odds and ends to be sorted out. Basically, it is happy; so what does he expect to achieve by putting this off to
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