Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 11 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 2861 ..

MR CONNOLLY (continuing):

Mrs Carnell just painted a scenario where a relationship between a Minister and the permanent head has totally broken down and as a result, she said, nothing is getting done and things are falling apart. If that had happened, Mr Speaker, the agency head would be in breach of the objective performance aspects of his or her performance contract, and could be removed on that basis. A system of performance contracts, which this house has voted in favour of, objectively structured around performance outcomes that are expected - some of us have some doubts about how effectively that can be done, having sat on both sides of estimates committees over the years - is what you are saying you will achieve. You are saying you will have contracts with objective performance criteria set against each agency head. If the agency head fails to deliver against those objective criteria their position is in jeopardy, and that is what this house has clearly voted for.

What the Leader of the Opposition is saying is that you are now adding to that this dangerously subjective element of incompatibility. Mrs Carnell paints the scenario of the person who is failing to perform against their performance contract, and you can deal with that person without incompatibility. The only reason you need incompatibility is if you do not like the person's political background, or, as the very senior public servant said in his Garran Oration the other day, "If you do not like the way they part their hair".

Mr Speaker, members who are convinced of the Government's reform package, who support a reform package that is based, as the Chief Minister says, on accountability and on performance against identified criteria, should support the Leader of the Opposition's amendment, because it removes the subjective element. We have heard absolutely no defence as to why a subjective basis of incompatibility is needed. We have heard a diatribe from Mr Humphries which leads us to suspect that what is really behind incompatibility is a desire on the part of some members of the Liberal Party to square up over old grievances. They clearly think they had some grievance back in 1989.

Mr Speaker, those members who support the reform package of the Chief Minister - we have grave doubts about it - should support this amendment, because it is consistent with at least the rhetoric of Mrs Carnell's package. This provision, if it remains, means that the rhetoric of Mrs Carnell's package is really a disguise for a blatant politicisation of the public service by allowing the permanent head not to be measured against objective criteria but to be able to be dismissed at the whim of a Minister. The Minister simply has to say, "I find you incompatible". It is a dangerous, subjective element which subverts the stated aims of this reform package.

MR MOORE (12.01): Mr Speaker, I have listened with interest to the argument and I spoke for some time with the Chief Minister's chief executive officer, Mr Walker, about this issue. I listened to the arguments presented, saying this is the sort of thing that happens and therefore it is an open way of dealing with something that already happens. The major difference, I think, is highlighted by the example of Mr Lyon. On the one hand, where somebody is incompatible they are dealt with in the way Mr Lyon was dealt with. He was effectively transferred from one spot to another. His salary package still came in. It was not a matter of questioning his competence.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .