Page 2371 - Week 07 - Thursday, 17 August 2006
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the commission; in fact, they are not subject to any eligibility criteria whatsoever, but that has not led to the politicisation of the commission.
The government is not proposing a complete absence of criteria for the appointment of the chairperson of the commission. Instead, we are simply seeking to expand the criteria because the existing criteria make it extremely difficult to find a suitable candidate. The existing criteria state that it can only be a judge, someone who has been a judge, a chief executive in the ACT public service, the secretary of a commonwealth department—or a member of another electoral commission who can be appointed as chairperson.
There are of course some contradictions in this. For example, eligibility for the Commonwealth Electoral Commission is not as restrictive; in fact, they simply indicate that a person of good standing should be appointed as the chairperson of the Australian Electoral Commission. Even though they do not have the same eligibility criteria that we have, if someone has served as chair of the Australian Electoral Commission they could be chair of the ACT electoral commission even though, in their previous appointment, they may have been a member of a political party at some distant point in their past when they were a student, or something like that.
I am not going to proceed to the detail stage today. I am going to ask members to reflect again on this issue. I do not want to push this legislation throughout without a reasonable level of consensus in this place. It is too important for that.
The other issue I want to raise, which I do not think Mr Stefaniak and Dr Foskey have had regard for, is that there is a clear requirement in the ACT Electoral Act that the executive or the responsible minister—the Attorney-General usually—must consult with the leader of each political party before making a decision on appointments to the committee.
That safeguard makes it very clear that, in practice, it is impossible for the executive to sustain an appointment to the commission that does not have the agreement of the opposition parties and other parties represented in this place. That I think is a very important safeguard and one which the government has every intention of retaining.
I would put it to members that the existing criteria are extremely narrow and make it in practice difficult to find somebody to take up an appointment as chairperson of the commission. Ordinary members of the commission do not have any restriction on their eligibility, and that has not led to the politicisation of the commission to date.
The government is seeking not to have the same requirements for the chairperson as already exist for ordinary members of the commission, but is instead simply trying to broaden the provisions in a way that allows the government to have an effective field of candidates from which to select an appointment which is satisfactory to all members and all parties in this place.
The provisions are similar to those which exist for other important statutory officers where independence is required; for example, the President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. These are not radical departures or departures meant to undermine the independence and integrity of the electoral commission.
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