Page 1527 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 2012
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I will just speak briefly to this report. As members will see when the report is circulated, the recommendations of this report are that the Legislative Assembly establish officers of parliament with the recommendation that the Auditor-General be established as an officer of the parliament. The standing committee did consider whether other statutory office holders should be made officers of the parliament. It was the decision of the committee that at this time the Auditor-General should be considered but that we establish processes for the future—that if we have other officers of the parliament established, there is a process that can allow that to occur.
That is all I wish to say. I commend the report to the Assembly—and the recommendations from the committee in that report.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (11.45): As the chair of the committee, I wish to make a few remarks additional to those just offered by Ms Bresnan.
This committee was formed following the recommendation of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. This committee resolved on 15 April to undertake an inquiry on the feasibility of establishing the position of officer of the parliament, as it relates to the Auditor-General, the Ombudsman, the Electoral Commissioner and other statutory office holders. So the PAC specifically raised this question in one of its earlier reports and suggested that the administration and procedure committee take it on. We thought that that was a wise reference, and the committee set about to do that.
We went through the usual process of calling for public submissions, and we received 14 submissions in the end. There was a good range of submissions from the ACT government, Elections ACT, the ACT Auditor-General, the ACT Human Rights Commission, the ACT Ombudsman, Professor Roger Wettenhall, the Australian Information Commissioner, the House of Representatives, the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, the New South Wales Legislative Council, the South Australian House of Assembly, the Western Australian Legislative Council, the Western Australian Standing Committee on Estimates and Financial Operations, and Dr John Wood, who is the director of Baljurda Comprehensive Consulting. The committee held public hearings. They were quite informative. They were a good opportunity for the committee to explore the issue in some detail.
I will go straight to the recommendations the committee concluded upon. I am very pleased to observe that this is a unanimous report from the committee. We had some very good conversations. I will come back to the community members later, but the fact that the committee has come out with a common view on this is a welcome outcome in giving guidance back to the Assembly as a whole on our views on these matters.
Let me focus on the recommendations. The first is this:
The committee recommends that statutory office holders who meet an established criteria be made Officers of the Parliament.
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