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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3589 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

The bill adapts elements of the New Zealand State Sector Act 1988, with a number of other provisions which supposed reflect Australian tradition in public sector practice. We need to look for a model which reflects ACT city/state requirements. I am not sure at first flush that the requirements of New Zealand in this respect meet the requirements of the ACT.

We have a different set of government arrangements and different service obligations. Our resource base is very different. It is perhaps not so different as we might imagine, but it is reasonably different, and we need to be careful about adopting a provision for a nation state like New Zealand into the ACT.

The package purports to deliver on objectives of enhancing responsible government through accountability and transparency. In fact, it proposes a different set of accountability arrangements that impact on the function of the public service and its relationship to the government of the day.

The totality of what is proposed does not enhance accountability and transparency. If it does, it does so in a way which greatly damages the capacity of the elected government to be able to be accountable for what it does. It inserts between the government and the community a set of people who become responsible by virtue of the independence that they hold from the decision-making exercise of government.

Although it is important to have a high-quality, responsive public service which is perhaps better defined and better protected in some respects than is presently the case-there is an argument for that-to give them a level of tenure and permanence and a set of accountability arrangement running other than to the government of the day creates the opportunity for this public service to be held accountable separately from the government of the day.

My old-fashioned notion of accountability is that governments, having been elected, have to be responsible for what happens in the affairs of government. If there are mistakes, they have to fix them. If there are issues or problems, they have to address them. If a public service has a measure of independence from government, then the question arises: who is to be held accountable, the government or the public service?

The bill removes what the government sees as important cross-agency obligations and capacity for collective action-the obligation for chief executives to have regard to the interests of the government and the service as a whole under section 29 of the act. I think this is a retrograde move that strikes at one of the ACT public service's strengths in serving its community-that is, the capacity to work across departmental boundaries to provide integrated and coordinated services to the community. We are a small public service, and our size means that we can achieve a level of integration, at least in theory, that other much larger services cannot even aspire to. Collaborative government and a collegial approach are positive values, and I think they should be enhanced, not removed.

Government-wide activity is sometimes incorrectly criticised because of perceived concerns about vertical lines of accountability-who exactly is responsible for making the decision. A balance of accountability and outcomes supported by appropriate levels

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