Page 2069 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 May 2009
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spoken to me lament the loss of the state of the service report, particularly because of the in-depth look that it gave to the state of the ACT public service.
For me, that also raises the question, which is covered in recommendation 7, of the decision of this government to merge the functions of the Commissioner for Public Administration with that of the Deputy Chief Executive of the Governance Division of the Chief Minister’s Department. It is very hard for a commissioner to be independent when the rest of that person’s job involves working directly to the head of the Chief Minister’s Department. It is very difficult for anyone to keep that division in their mind. If you are working in one part of Chief Minister’s and you are reporting on the whole of the public service in the other part of your job, it is nigh on impossible. Perhaps something that we need to look at long term is the reform of that. What is the role of the Commissioner for Public Administration and how does that person’s job impact on the public service and on the ACT?
For instance, I once wrote to the commissioner and asked the then commissioner to conduct a review. She wrote back and said, “I can’t; you’ll have to write to the Chief Minister.” Given that it was a review of something that the Chief Minister and his department were doing, I suspect that the Chief Minister was not going to do that. So if we are genuine about having scrutiny and we are not afraid of scrutiny then the whole question of the independence of the Commissioner for Public Administration certainly needs to be looked at.
Recommendation 9 asks that the commissioner look at the feasibility of including more environmentally friendly transport packages. I know that some jurisdictions overseas have bus tickets included as approved salary packaging items. We currently do not, and it is certainly something that we could look at. It may take some changes to federal acts, but let us start down that road. It is very important. We see in the budget that bus fares are going up. As it becomes more expensive, and as parking fees in particular are going up and as they become more expensive, we need to make sure that public servants also have options so that they can react to the world as it changes around them.
The reports that we looked at included things like EPIC. We had an outcome on EPIC on Tuesday, when the government was told to leave EPIC alone. With respect to your speech, Mr Speaker, there was a suggestion that you and I have discussions about what we might do. There is a way forward with EPIC and I think we need to look at it. It is important that EPIC’s independence continues, so that the board can get on with the job.
Some issues came up in the report about Tidbinbilla. Maybe I am confusing my reports. I will speak about the Tidbinbilla bush fire brigade site a little later today.
Mr Speaker, there were suggestions about helping to improve the effectiveness of the Assembly. There are a number here—specifically, 13, 14, 15 and 16—that you might like to have a look at. It is about keeping up with the times and giving members’ offices the tools they need to be more effective. For instance, there are issues like whether we use fax machines these days or whether it is possible to get a multifunction product that prints, copies, scans, faxes and perhaps even does some
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