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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (18 April) . . Page.. 1118 ..

MS FOLLETT: Mr Speaker, I might conclude on that note. I find that a massive double standard which amounts to arrant racism on the part of the Federal Government. It is a clear double standard in relation to accountability. It is one rule for the rest of the community and another rule for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.

Mr Speaker, in relation to the Ombudsman's activities in the ACT, I believe that we have been very well served by the office, and I am very pleased indeed to see the jurisdiction being extended by this Bill to the Territory's corporations. I think it is a very necessary step. I certainly would not want to see any further reduction in the accountability processes that the community has available to it. We have already seen the FOI office closed. That is a step backwards. We have now seen the Federal Government's attack on the Ombudsman's Office. That is enough, as far as I am concerned. The community is fully entitled to accountability for government decision-making. Mr Speaker, if there are further diminutions of that accountability such as we have seen from both the ACT Government and the Federal Government, then I think the community would have every right to be asking some very hard questions indeed. There is no mandate for this kind of activity. It is quite misleading and false to claim that there is.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (4.45), in reply: Mr Speaker, I am afraid that the sorts of comments we heard from Ms Follett were fairly predictable but also very wide of the mark. Let me talk, first of all, about the Ombudsman's Office. This Bill is about extending the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman's control to Territory-owned corporations - not all Territory corporations but Territory-owned corporations - and is about ensuring that those bodies have a level of accountability which we expect from government bodies.

A person listening to this debate who was not well informed about the role of the Ombudsman could easily come away from hearing Ms Follett with the impression that there is some threat to the ACT Ombudsman function by virtue of what has occurred at the Federal level or is imputed to be going to occur at the Federal level. Mr Speaker, the ACT purchases Ombudsman services from the Commonwealth and it pays for those services, which means that if the Commonwealth function of the Ombudsman changes, waxes or wanes according to levels of Commonwealth funding, that particular fact has little or no bearing on the ACT's receipt of services from the Ombudsman.

If it is the Commonwealth's decision - I do not believe that it is - to decimate the role of the Ombudsman and to leave it a shell of what it was before, the ACT still pays for its own services and still has officers within that office dedicated to the work within the ACT that the ACT Government puts its way. As I understand it, the office does not generally have officers moving in all different areas, dealing sometimes with ACT matters and sometimes with Commonwealth matters, and vice versa. It has officers dedicated to the ACT function and also, I think, to the police investigation function. Mr Speaker, I do not believe that those things will be in the least compromised by what is occurring at the Federal level. It is most mischievous to suggest that that is the case.

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