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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (30 August) . . Page.. 3745 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

even references in the bill Mr Kaine originally tabled to New South Wales positions which had no equivalent in the ACT-certainly not with the titles that were used.

It seems to me that an inquiry of the kind that the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety undertook ought to have been an inquiry to determine fundamentally whether there was a level of corruption or lack of integrity in government such as would warrant a bill of this kind being considered, much less passed. My quick overview of what the committee has found indicates that evidence of there being corruption in the ACT is not identified by the standing committee, which I suspect led the committee to the view that we should not be proceeding with this sort of legislation.

I note the comments Mr Kaine made about why people feel a sense of dissatisfaction with the way government looks at things in the ACT. He said that public officials do not focus sufficient attention on matters of concern to members of the public. That may be true. Mr Kaine also said that there were people who felt that there was a corruption of the system by virtue of the fact that they felt themselves to be victims of the system, because they were dissatisfied with outcomes that the system had delivered. All of that is worth noting. I have no doubt that each of us, as members of this place, have encountered such people from time to time.

But whether any of that amounts to a state of affairs that would be fairly described as a lack of integrity on the part of government officials or, to be more blunt about it, corruption is another matter altogether. Nothing I see in this report suggests that any evidence of corruption has been unearthed.

There may be people who were dissatisfied with the way in which they were dealt with by the system at various stages. I note from paragraph 29 and the following paragraphs that someone giving evidence before the committee referred to dissatisfaction with the conduct of the AFP, the DPP and the Ombudsman and listed the sorts of things they felt were inappropriate in the way in which those organisations dealt with their concern.

I do not know who this person was. There was a case I had some encounter with which quite possibly fits those circumstances. I do not know enough about it to know whether this is the case or it is not. But again nothing is disclosed on the face of this report that would suggest that any of those officials-the AFP, the DPP or the Ombudsman-were corrupt. Indeed, I am not sure the committee came to the view that any evidence put forward suggested corruption on the part of any of those officials.

I maintain the view that legislation of the kind being put forward is, to some degree, playing with fire. Even the tabling of a bill in the Assembly suggesting that there is a problem with corruption that needs to be dealt with is a step which could be misinterpreted by members of the community.

I want to reassert, on the basis of not having seen anything in this report to contradict it, that the ACT is served by public officials who are of a very high quality. There is little or no evidence of corruption or lack of integrity in the discharge of duties by public officials in this city. I see that as an important reaffirmation of the quality of the people who serve this community day in and day out in a range of occupations.

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