Page 2050 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 May 2009
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Similarly, why should public servants be entitled to hide behind the veil of secrecy? While exceptions must always be made to safeguard our personal safety, national security, commercial confidences and privacy issues, if their views are well thought out and delivered with objective professionalism, that is the hallmark of true public service. Why should they not be exposed to public scrutiny?
We are up against a fundamental philosophical divide with this debate. On the one hand we have a government which thinks that governments have a right to govern in secrecy, and on the other hand we have the Greens who believe that government is too important to be left to politicians, that collective wisdom is needed to deliver optimal policy outcomes and that the community must have a greater say in what is done on their behalf. The functional review would seem to be an example of the type of document which should be made publicly available in order for the public to form rational and well-informed opinions on matters of vital public importance. It is disappointing that the government continues to keep the community in the dark by choosing to hide behind the excuse of cabinet in confidence.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (10.50): The government, unlike the Greens and the Liberal Party, welcomes Sir Laurence Street’s decision on the functional review and the clear statements it contains about the role of the cabinet.
At the nub of the conversation or the debate there is a philosophical difference. It relates to an appreciation which the government has about the role of the cabinet in our system of government, the centrality of the cabinet to the system of government and its importance to the strength of our democracy. In relation to the statements the report contains about the relationship between the executive and the legislature in the ACT, it is a relationship that Sir Laurence Street has summarised in a way that unfortunately—I think it presents some interesting issues and challenges for us into the future—the Greens have just indicated they do not accept and do not support.
In other words, the Greens have just announced explicitly and comprehensively that they do not support the current notions of responsible government which apply in the ACT, in Australia and in the western democratic world. I think that is an interesting position for us to reflect upon. It is interesting too, having just listened to the extensive traducing of the Speaker’s own appointed arbitrator, the disinclination to accept the legitimacy and validity of an arbitration by somebody that is regarded as perhaps Australia’s leading jurist and judge. On the appointment of the Speaker, he produced a report as requested by the Speaker which the Speaker disagrees with on behalf of the Greens and which he now simply rejects.
It is quite remarkable. It is a quite remarkable sequence of behaviour, particularly by the Speaker. His own appointed arbitrator, in his first commission to arbitrate on a decision consistent with a process developed by the government in consult with the Greens, is now to be rubbished because the Greens did not like the outcome. The arbitration, the decision, is an outrage simply because it did not meet the Greens’ expectations.
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