Page 2166 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
another day? The result will be that the structure the Government wants will be put in place, the Government's process of cooperating with further changes will be minimal and we will see that the onus of engineering these improvements, which the committee acknowledged will be fairly radical changes, will shift from the Government, which wants to get the thing in place, to the committee which has been reconstituted by the motion today.
The onus will shift back to that body. That body obviously will have many fewer resources than the Government does to achieve this task, and it will also have a much more limited timeframe. The pressure on its members to propose changes and to put them before the Assembly in time for it to pass them by the end of the year is going to be intense. I do not think it is going to be possible to achieve that. The effect of this decision to support the Government's position, with respect, Mr Moore, will be to require the issues to go back onto the backburner. That will be a great pity, given the opportunity we had to create a service of excellence.
I read with interest recommendation 5 of the committee. I read particularly the conclusions which led the committee to make that recommendation. I want to quote some of them briefly. I think they summarise very well the problems that are outstanding at this point. I quote from page 16 of the committee's report:
While some of the technical issues raised with the Committee may be resolved by negotiation ... other issues of contention will not be resolved as easily.
The attention that the Committee can give to these issues has, however, been severely limited by the intention of the Government to bring on debate about the Bills only seven weeks after being introduced into the Assembly.
The major concerns over fundamental aspects of the legislation expressed by the DPP, the Legal Aid Commission, APESMA and the Leader of the Opposition question the very structure of the model ... and need to be addressed by the Government before the legislation is implemented.
... ... ...
Taken collectively, the concerns expressed to the Committee by all witnesses would suggest that the imposition of the Public Sector Management Bills in their present form with a centralised control structure would be ill advised.
I think those concerns are legitimate. I note that Mr Berry, in a one-page dissenting report, says - - -
Mr De Domenico: How many pages?
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .