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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 346 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

In recent times it has been our policy not to be prescriptive in the qualifications of board members appointed by legislation. However, in this particular area, given that the Government has described these fields of commerce and economics, et cetera, we believe that it is necessary to balance and modify those - not to decrease the capacity of the commission by any means but in fact to strengthen the capacity of this commission so that it has greater skill, greater understanding and greater perception of the community, the area which it will be impacting upon by its decision.

We feel that the last two subclauses put forward in Ms Tucker's amendment warrant the Assembly's full support.

MS TUCKER (12.08): I would like to respond to Mr Humphries again. He said there may be a particularly tricky legal question and that my amendment about associate commissioners would preclude the possibility of a legal person being brought in. My amendment says:

That is exactly the point. If a particular expertise is needed, you would bring in such a person. I would like to give an example Mr Rugendyke might relate to. I am not sure how he is going to vote on this. Say we end up with a proposal that policing in the ACT should be outsourced; that because of competitive neutrality the government service should not be providing policing; that we should be just getting it out wider. That is an argument that has been put by the independent schools lobby too. They say that we should have competitive neutrality in education; that everyone has exactly the same right to provide a service; that the public school system should not be favoured in any way. Someone could put that argument in respect of policing as well.

If we had a complaint about that, I would have thought you would want the commission to be able to bring in someone with expertise in policing to put their view on the public interest. In theory it might look fine. The Government would say, "Anyone can deliver these police services. We will have contracts that regulate and specify a standard. Because of our regulatory regime" - we are having this discussion now about a prison - "we can guarantee that the service will be the same". A person who has a strong relationship with policing might like to say to that committee, "I do not know that the public interest would be served by this". For that reason it would be very useful in that debate to bring in as an associate commissioner someone who has experience and expertise in policing.

This is a totally reasonable thing to put. The Labor Party have said they will support it. Mr Rugendyke, you will be critical to this, I think. Mr Kaine, I am not clear on your position. It is something that all of us would think is sensible, so I do ask for your support.

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