Page 1735 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 1 May 2012
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blindly adopt approaches delivered in other jurisdictions. We should carefully consider how these initiatives should be adopted to suit the particular circumstances of our city-state government and parliament. The standards we articulate for behaviour should reflect the expectations of our community and those that we have of ourselves and our colleagues and our counterparts. Indeed, to be valuable, codes of conduct must be authentic and adapted to the circumstances in which they are intended to apply. As the Tasmanian Integrity Commission notes in its report on codes of conduct in that state:
Codes of conduct play a valuable role in defining and communicating acceptable standards of conduct in an organisation or parliament, provide guidance to individuals, and motivate them to demonstrate appropriate behaviour.
For this reason, I asked the Head of Service for advice on changes necessary to the ACT’s code of conduct for ministers, given recent reforms in other jurisdictions and the passage of time since it was last published. That review is complete, and I have tabled a modern ministerial code of conduct that addresses possible issues when accepting a ministry until a person ceases being a minister.
As part of that review, I have agreed to the establishment of a separate formal code of conduct for ministerial staff, which has been prepared and is currently going through a period of consultation. Additionally, I have raised with the Speaker the need for the MLAs’ code of conduct to be refreshed before the 2012 election. Part of that process should, in my view, be the establishment of more formal arrangements for registration of lobbyists seeking to engage with MLAs.
I am advised that the Head of Service and the Commissioner for Public Administration have recently commenced a process of consultation with staff across the ACT public service that will culminate in the development, for the first time, of a formal, comprehensive ACT public service code of conduct.
I have also asked the Head of Service and the Commissioner for Public Administration to examine the benefits to the ACT of redefining the role of the commissioner to expressly include a role in setting and enforcing public sector standards, including a redefinition of the role along the lines of a public sector standards commissioner. This approach reflects the evolving nature of that position in light of the proper location of what might be characterised as mechanical powers in relation to the employment of officials by the Head of Service under the one ACT public service model.
As a first step in this direction, I set new priorities for the commissioner for 2011-12. While they remain matters of continuing importance and application, the current priorities relating to the respect, equity and diversity framework and targeted employment strategies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and people with a disability have largely been established as part of ongoing business. I have therefore agreed the commissioner’s priorities should comprise: with the Head of Service, fostering a positive workplace culture and high standards of behaviour in the ACT public service; investigating individual employment-related grievances with a view to distilling systemic learnings that might be applied across the ACT public service and
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