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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 2347 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

Mr Speaker, today is not the time to go into a detailed explanation of the details of this proposed Bill. I think it warrants detailed examination. In brief, the proposed independent commission will be constituted as a statutory corporation comprising a single commissioner. The commissioner will be appointed by the Attorney-General. He or she must be a former judge, or at least qualified to be a justice of a superior court in Australia, and he or she may be assisted by one or more assistant commissioners. The draft Bill also provides for the appointment of an operations review committee whose function is to advise the commissioner, especially about any action that might be taken in respect of complaints about corruption. A third and most significant provision of the draft Bill is for the establishment of an ethical standards council, comprising members of this Assembly and a number of community members, which is not inconsistent with the recent proposal by the Chief Minister to establish an ethics commissioner, I think.

Mr Speaker, a lot of work has gone into this draft Bill already. Given its intricacy and, I grant, its controversial nature, a great deal more work is probably yet to be done, which is why today I am presenting an exposure draft to the Assembly, and which is why I have disseminated it widely, including to anti-corruption bodies in other jurisdictions. I expect that this Bill will have a long gestation period and that people will fully understand every aspect of it before it is even debated in this place.

The Carnell Government and the Canberra Times aside, the responses I have received by mail, email and phone over the past two weeks have been uniformly positive. Indeed, some correspondents have emphasised the urgency of the need for such a powerful investigatory body in the ACT, complementing those similar bodies in neighbouring jurisdictions. Regrettably, as I predicted, the response from our Attorney-General and our Chief Minister has been, shall we say, lukewarm, but I am more inclined to take note of comments from eminent individuals like the retiring Auditor-General of New South Wales and his counterpart in Victoria. Official corruption, they inform us, is rife. It is going on, as we speak, behind closed government doors, according to those officials, and, as I have said before, I do not see why the ACT is any different to Victoria or New South Wales. I repeat:

To get at this cancer and to protect our community, I believe we must have in place the appropriately powerful investigatory mechanisms, and it is noted, in essence, Mr Speaker, by having such things as pricing regulation commissioners and discrimination commissioners. They both serve a useful purpose, and I believe so will this proposed commission.

The proposed Bill, which I have now tabled, will in due course be the subject of a true Bill, which I hope to table later this year, and it seeks to achieve the desirable end of having a powerful investigative mechanism in place to protect our community. Mr Speaker, I will commend it, when the time comes, to the Assembly. Thank you.

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