Page 3444 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
The corollary of that is that we need a mechanism that does actually protect them. It appears that there can be some concern about that given the current laws, which is one of the reasons why the motion should be supported and a comprehensive review of the legislation undertaken. I would also like to reiterate the point that there is a wealth of information on this issue, including an inquiry by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which made a range of findings and recommendations largely consistent with the whistling while they work project. All this is why the Greens included the public interest disclosure reform in the parliamentary agreement in 2008. As I said earlier, recent public cases have only further highlighted the need for reform.
The third part of the motion deals with complaint handling. Again, this is a very important part of effective government service delivery. The Greens are particularly concerned at the range of issues that the Ombudsman has raised in relation to complaints handling throughout the ACT public service. Earlier today we had the PAC committee table their report into the Auditor-General’s report about complaint handling within Canberra Connect and TAMS. The Auditor-General’s report made a number of critical findings that have been reinforced by the Ombudsman. What the Ombudsman has done—and something that I think we should be very grateful for—is to take the initiative and develop a 10-point plan of how to fix the problems that have arisen. My motion calls for the government to respond to that plan. I hope that they will implement it in the near future.
There are a range of initiatives in the plan and I will quickly go through a few of them. The first is to clarify the new government structure, which has caused significant public and, it appears, departmental confusion at times. Further improvements recommended by the Ombudsman are to introduce a consistent complaint handling structure across the whole of government, adopt an agreed definition of what constitutes a complaint, commit to ongoing training and career development for ACT government employees, introduce consistent case management systems servicing agencies, use plain language in communication, improve the approach to decision making, including by providing clearer statements of reasons—(Quorum formed.)—and improve contract management by giving powers to the Ombudsman’s office to oversee third-party service providers. This is a power that most other state and territory ombudsmen have. We also need to ensure that officers and agencies responsible for maintaining carriage of service requests and applications are clearly identified, introduce a program of regular inspections covering the broad range of conditions and services available at and via ACT Corrective Services and, finally, move away from a culture of denial and defensiveness to one that welcomes complaints and Ombudsman reports as a means of improving service delivery.
I would particularly like to focus on the last point for a minute and take the opportunity to emphasise the importance of a positive culture towards complaints. In the motion I have referred to the importance of valuing complaints consistent with the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s “Better practice guide to complaint handling” of 2009. The guide says:
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video