Page 2407 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 June 1994
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a public servant believes that particular information would be of benefit to the Government or should be brought forward or made public. There is nothing in the Government's legislation to protect those sorts of people from any unfair approaches by the Government or by their superiors.
As you would also be aware, in stand-alone legislation there is a capacity to cover people who are not public servants or contractors to the public service. I very strongly support a Bill that is substantially broader than the Government's current legislation. Rather than debate whistleblowers again in this place, I indicate that the Opposition strongly supports stand-alone legislation. We strongly support the committee's recommendations that that should happen. We support the recommendation that the Bill that is already on the table be the basis for that legislation. As we have no commitment from the Government along those lines at this stage, we will be moving to delete Part XII.
MS SZUTY (5.45): Madam Speaker, I support the inclusion of this clause in the Public Sector Management Bill for the time being. I would like to draw the Assembly's attention to recommendation 7 of the report of the Select Committee on the Establishment of an ACT Public Service, which stated:
The committee recommends that the whistleblowing provisions of the Public Sector Management Bill (Division XII) should remain in place until such time as stand alone legislation is passed by the Assembly.
The committee also recommended that consideration of the stand-alone legislation was an important priority. I note that it is one the newly created Standing Committee on the Public Sector will get to, I believe sooner rather than later. I think it would be the desire of the former members of the Select Committee on the Establishment of an ACT Public Service to address this matter expeditiously. We did have some discussions about the whistleblowing provisions in both the Public Sector Management Bill and Mrs Carnell's Public Interest Disclosure Bill during the committee process, but it would be fair to say that time prevented us from dealing in detail with the provisions of Mrs Carnell's Bill and with the whistleblowing section of the Public Sector Management Bill. Madam Speaker, this is an issue the Assembly will return to, and I undertake, as a member of the Standing Committee on the Public Sector, to deal with the matter as expeditiously as I can.
MR KAINE (5.47): I support the proposal that this Part of the Bill be omitted, and I do so because I think it is better to have no legislation than bad legislation. I note that when the first draft of this legislation was distributed in February of this year this Part was not in it. So it has been a very late addition to the Government's Bill. At the time they did this, they knew that Mrs Carnell's more comprehensive Bill had been on the table for some months, and I suspect that this was cobbled together fairly quickly to anticipate the debate and try to set aside the more comprehensive Bill the Leader of the Opposition had already tabled.
When the Bill was tabled and the Chief Minister was talking about this Part, she expressed the concern that if Part XII were simply excised from the Bill it would affect other parts of the Bill because, she said, the Bill was a comprehensive Bill that had been put together at the same time. We know that that latter statement is not true. It was not put together
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