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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 282 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

what is happening; not just what is happening, but what groups we are consulting with, what the feedback is, what the dates are. All of those sorts of things are there now. It concerns the Government greatly that there are perceptions somehow that that consultation is not real. Why would we do it if it was not real? It certainly does not achieve any particular political benefits, or whatever, to do that sort of thing.

I would like to make some comments about the bit of the motion that I did not talk about before, and that is the community consultation. Nobody has indicated that the Government is not consulting. In fact, everybody has indicated that there are an enormous number of consultation procedures that have been had and are under way with the Government - all the way through planning, health, precinct groups, consultative councils. In fact, I think we have something like 120 different advisory groups or consultative groups right across government. One could say, "Heavens! Why do you need that many?". The reality is that there are lots of areas where government needs input. All of that is in place. No-one is saying that the level of consultation is not okay. Nobody is even suggesting that the people who are on these entities are not the right people, because they almost always come from the community. The comment is that the feedback is not as good as it should have been. Okay, we accept that; we accept that sort of input. The reason that the new customer involvement area, with three full-time people, has been set up is to overcome exactly the issues that Kerrie Tucker has raised in her motion.

I then move on to the next part of the motion, because the comments about community consultation are comments that we take very seriously and have spent a lot of time, a lot of taxpayers' money and a lot of work on to make sure we do get our processes right. The issue now of directing the Government or requiring the Government to make particular appointments to particular boards shows a huge lack of understanding of the Government approach or Government procedures.

I am interested to see also some amendments that I assume will be moved by Simon Corbell. I accept he is very new in this place. He seems to not understand at all the approach that has been taken by his own party in the past. He is indicating in his first new paragraph that members of boards and authorities are somehow representatives of communities. The view that we have taken in this place - both sides of the house have - is that people who are on boards or authorities - in other words, decision-making entities - are not representatives of particular entities. The moment somebody becomes a board member, as Ms McRae would know, by law that person can no longer represent a particular external body. Their job must be to represent the board and the entity. You cannot have a situation where somebody is a representative of a third party.

Mr Corbell: I am aware of that. That is not what the amendment says.

MRS CARNELL: That is good. It is what the amendment says at this stage.

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