Page 2740 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
official visitor to suit the different role they are required to play in each setting. This is the current legislative framework. The Greens’ bill reverses this position and attempts to apply a blanket framework to all official visitors.
The bill will also undermine the strength of the official visitors—that of being able to resolve complaints informally without having to comply with constricting legislative procedures. Members will be aware that the ACT Mental Health Consumer Network as well as the corrections official visitor made submissions on the Greens’ exposure draft that emphasised how the absence of prescriptive legislative processes is fundamental to the official visitors’ ability to fix problems and issues where and when they arise.
There are also major resource concerns with the Greens’ proposal requiring official visitors to speak with other interested people or people speaking on behalf of an entitled person. Firstly, it is conceivable that a diverse and possibly large group of people may seek to speak to an official visitor on behalf of an entitled person. This is particularly the case as the majority of entitled people will be amongst the community’s most vulnerable citizens. The consequence of this proposal is the imposition of an unreasonable workload on official visitors. They are already working in areas that can be difficult and complex. The Greens apparently think we need to increase their workload.
In this context, it is important to note that official visitors currently fit their visitor duties within their work life. There is a volunteering component to some of the OV roles, reflecting the personal commitment of appointees to raising the standards of care and support in the communities in which they work. The ability to attract and retain high quality, committed volunteers may be undermined by the imposition of unnecessary resource and time-intensive requirements on official visitors.
It is also worth noting that the requirement for official visitors to speak to other interested people raises a range of complex privacy, guardianship and power of attorney issues which have not been fully explored or analysed.
The bill proposes a number of changes that seek to improve the independence of official visitors. While the exposure draft bill proposed to insert a reporting duty to the office of the Public Advocate, the bill before the Assembly today includes amendments to break the direct relationship that currently exists between official visitors and their appointing ministers. This, it is argued, is to address the alleged position that the current arrangements inherently compromise official visitors’ independence.
The result of the proposed amendments would be that official visitors will be appointed by one minister but, in most cases, report to another. It is not clear how this will achieve greater independence for OVs. The government does not agree that the current process threatens the independence of an official visitor. The government believes the direct reporting relationship that an official visitor has with a minister sufficiently entrenches their independence and ensures that the official visitor is not subject to undue influence by the bureaucracy. The government believes the independence measures contained in the Greens’ bill are both ineffective and unnecessary.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video