Page 356 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
a member of the opposition party. The Assembly has respected the custom of the public accounts committee being chaired by a member of the opposition party, although more recently this has been and will continue to be from the crossbench. In doing this, the spirit of this requirement has been upheld. However, there has not been such an opportunity for members in the committee process to contribute to the development of policy and expenditure of public funds. The previous majority government was not receptive to this initiative.
This Assembly will be very different. The Greens agenda and initiatives will drive significant change and a much greater opportunity for all members, particularly the crossbench and the opposition, to have a greater role in public expenditure and more generally in policy development and the shape of the legislation.
I would like to say at this point as well that I welcome the constructive discussions we have had with Mr Corbell, as manager of government business, on these issues and the additional ideas that have been contributed in that discussion process. I think that the result has been good outcomes and good agreements to improve the processes of this place that I think will benefit, again, all three parties in this Assembly but also the reputation of this Assembly.
Access to information is another key part of the Greens’ reform agenda, in line with the adoption of these principles. Further amendments to the standing orders will be introduced, creating an independent arbiter for orders for papers, to facilitate a more streamlined process. This was the subject of quite some discussion yesterday, and I look forward to the arbiter taking up their role early in 2009.
The obligation on ministers to comply with requests for papers does not depend on the appointment of an independent arbiter. It does exist now. However, the appointment of an arbiter should reduce the expense and resources wasted on resolving disputes over which documents are truly exempt from disclosure.
We want to avoid a repeat of the New South Wales upper house experience of litigation going all the way to the High Court, which ultimately confirmed the obligation on ministers to comply with parliamentary requests for documents and information. That resulted in considerable expense for taxpayers in New South Wales, and it is a situation we are very keen to avoid in the ACT.
There will also be amendments to the Freedom of Information Act, so consistently pushed for by the opposition and crossbench for many years now. These changes will see a new era of transparency in government.
Endorsement of the Latimer House principles has been the subject of discussion in our own Assembly before this time and, as I mentioned at the start of my speech before the lunch break, I would like to acknowledge the work of the former Speaker, Mr Berry, on this issue. Mr Berry’s paper I cited earlier is an assessment of the ACT’s performance against the Latimer House benchmarks. Whilst it finds we do well in some areas, there are a number of areas where improvements need to be made.
I would also like to draw members’ attention to recommendation No 2 of report 14 of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts August 2008 which stated:
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .