Page 3433 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 September 2005
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Firstly, it proposes that an explanatory statement must accompany all bills, something, I must admit, that the government does, as is expected, that the Greens often do and that the opposition does less often. For instance, Mr Seselja’s bill today, which was relatively long and complex, was unaccompanied by an explanatory statement and will require resort to Hansard by interested members and community organisations.
While it is possible to find some guidance to the legislative intentions in the tabling speech for a bill, the Greens take the view that, if we are asking the government and other members to lift their game, the same rules should apply to everyone, even though that would mean providing 65 copies to the chamber support section prior to tabling.
The heart of the changes I am proposing can be found in clause 4 of the bill. This clause proposes to insert a new chapter 5A, redefining the explanatory statement and its purpose. If the Assembly passes the consultation bill, explanatory statements will be required to include a report on consultation undertaken in the development of a bill. They will list community groups, individuals and government agencies and departments with whom the bill has been discussed.
Such a move would greatly assist the work involved in scrutinising a bill, as it would encourage policy makers to invite people or groups that have expert knowledge or are affected by a proposed instrument to have input prior to the finalisation of a bill. It would provide scrutineers with improved information about the community’s inclusion in the bill’s development and assist members and political and community groups in determining who else needs to be notified about a bill’s presentation to the Assembly.
At the scrutiny of bills conference in March, which some members of this Assembly attended, one of the key speakers, Professor Steven Bottomley, noted:
We need to move away from what Edward Page, a UK political scientist, has called they world of secluded politics. There are two risks that need to be avoided here. One is where there has been no consultation at all where there should have been and the other is where there has been consultation but it has been targeted to known sectional interests, leaving other points of view out of the process—what the Administrative Review Council has called captured consultation.
The professor suggests:
… where an explanatory statement says that consultation has been carried out it specifies who is consulted; who was not consulted and why they were not consulted; how the consultation occurred, whether it was done by letters, notices in newspapers, face-to-face meetings and so forth; and what opinions were expressed by those who were consulted and whether those opinions were factored into the final instrument and in what way, and if not, why not. Alternatively, if no consultation has occurred … that in itself needs to be addressed and explained clearly in the explanatory statements.
Mr Speaker, I believe that a similar consultation report is required for cabinet submissions at a state and federal level but is not provided to the public. I have no idea if these consultation reports satisfy Professor Bottomley’s criteria, since I am not privy to their contents. However, the ACT cabinet handbook does state that it is mandatory for all
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