Page 2354 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 June 1994
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I want to say also that this Government has conducted and will continue to conduct a merit process for appointments to those head of agency positions, and we are pretty much alone in that. You do not find a great many other governments advertising for permanent heads, putting together selection panels and conducting a merit process. We do that and we will continue to do it; but if we are legally bound to the kind of process Mrs Carnell has outlined we cannot take a decision based on those personal factors, in parallel with the merit process, which I do regard as important. The result would be that what I regard as perfectly proper decisions for the Government to take and for Ministers to take would be challengeable in the courts. You would find a Minister or Chief Minister turning up in the court to answer a charge of preferment or discrimination, under the kind of arrangement Mrs Carnell has put forward. I do not believe that that is appropriate.
I believe that it is a matter where governments and Ministers have a right to select for those very senior positions the person they want, particularly when we do as we have always done, that is, go through a merit selection process. I know that Mrs Carnell says that her amendment does not relate to merit, it relates to discrimination and all the rest of it - - -
Mr Kaine: Patronage.
MS FOLLETT: Patronage; thank you, Mr Kaine. The point is that in the one and only case where this has been an issue, and I refer to the case of the appointment of Ms Cheryl Vardon as the head of the Education Department, the Opposition did raise such a matter, did challenge that appointment. The assertion they made, the assertion that was repeated in the press, was that I had discriminated against another candidate on the grounds of sex. In fact, that whole tale was a fabrication. We had had a merit selection process, as we have always had.
Mr Kaine: In that case, you should not object to this. It is not imposing anything that you do not already follow.
MS FOLLETT: Madam Speaker, Mr Kaine fails to understand that the amendment moved by his colleague Mrs Carnell, which I am sure she has not discussed with him, does change this. It does put a legal requirement on the Government to show that we have not discriminated - a requirement that could be tested in the courts. Again, it is the kind of amendment that is put up by someone who never expects to be in a position to make these decisions, I regret to say. I do not think anybody could have a better record than we have on our treatment of merit selection processes, openness, consultation on appointments, and so on. On the question of the appointment of Ms Vardon, I might say that that was consulted upon as well. A lot of good it did at the end of the day!
I urge on members of the Assembly caution in looking at this amendment. On the surface, it looks innocuous, warm and fuzzy; we are being anti-discriminatory, we are outlawing patronage and preferment, and all the rest of it. But it does have some underlying and quite grave implications which I feel I should bring to the attention of the Assembly and which will cause the Government to oppose the amendment.
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