Page 2128 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 22 June 2010
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That is what this is about. The legislation is a package and it will function well if we have the right legislation. It is not exactly what we wanted but we believe it is a pretty good balance based on some negotiation with you, Mr Speaker, and indeed the government. We believe that, whilst we did not all get exactly what we wanted, we got something pretty close that we believe is workable. It will not be perfect—maybe it will have to be amended down the track—but it is workable.
We also then need good guidelines and the guidelines need to be robust. There will be negotiation about those and it is important that we get them right. We need to make sure that the guidelines do not in some way water down the intent of the legislation, and that could easily happen. So we will be negotiating very closely to make sure the guidelines are right.
And, thirdly, we need to ensure that the person reviewing the legislation and how the government complies with the guidelines is absolutely the best person for the job and is beyond reproach. I have no particular criticisms to make of either of the people proposed here. It is simply our view that in order for us to know that this is the best person for the job we need to know who has applied. We understand that there were a number of applicants, about nine. Many of those may be not qualified; many may be very qualified. We do not know because we have not seen that list.
That is important, and it goes back to the fact that this is not a decision for the Chief Minister to make unilaterally or indeed for the government to make on its own. It is a decision for the Assembly. We sought that information from the government, we have not received it and for that reason we cannot support this motion today. If someone wants to propose an adjournment of this debate, we would be pleased to have further discussions and further negotiations along those lines. But, as the motion stands, until we have seen the pool of applicants, we cannot be 100 per cent sure that we are getting the absolute best applicants or make sure that what is a very important reform is not in any way undermined.
As I say, the legislation needs to be right—it is about right—the guidelines need to be strong and the person reviewing the government’s advertising proposals needs to be the best person for the job. If we tick off on all of those things, we can be very confident that we will have a very robust regime, as opposed to what we have seen federally. Federally, we have seen Kevin Rudd watering the process down, using the veneer of a process to allow him to go on his merry way.
And did his predecessor do it? Yes, he did, and Mr Rudd criticised him for it and said it was a cancer on our democracy. He said, “I’m going to put in place a process that will stop that from happening again,” and he was able to water it down to the extent that now we are seeing advertising of government policy, funded by us, funded by the taxpayer, really to tell us why we should back the government’s argument on a contentious policy issue—a contentious policy issue that is potentially not going to come before the parliament for a number of years, yet we are being treated to $38 million worth of advertising to tell us why the government is right.
That is what can happen if we do not get all aspects of this process right. We do not want just the veneer of a process; we want to get all aspects right. So I will restate it:
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