Page 3571 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012
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At its meeting on 6 December 2011 the committee discussed the report titled An assessment of the performance of the three branches of government in ACT against Latimer House principles, which was presented to the Legislative Assembly by Professor John Halligan. That assessment looked at a number of matters but, in particular, identified potential reforms relating to the self-government act. After that, we then noted that there had also been recent reviews of the ACT public service and the National Capital Authority conducted by Dr Alan Hawke. In both those reviews, potential reforms related to the self-government act were also identified.
The other piece of background was that the committee was also aware of evidence given by commonwealth public servants from the territories division of the Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport to a Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry on 21 March 2011, where it was stated that the parliament would welcome any advice from the ACT following the review of the self-government act.
I think this was a particularly important indicator, at least in my mind, because I think there has been discussion for some time of the necessity for reviewing the self-government act. There was some sense that it perhaps could be a joint commonwealth-ACT effort. What we heard very clearly in that hearing was that the commonwealth was looking to the ACT to come forward with views on what some of those changes may be, and I think that provided real impetus for this inquiry to take place in the Assembly.
Throughout the review, the committee received 24 submissions from a broad range of stakeholders and heard from 12 witnesses over two days of public hearings. Those public hearings also included the committee’s first-ever Twitter public hearing, which was an interesting exercise of the committee, to respond to those people that came online and contributed in real time.
The committee are grateful to all participants who appeared before the committee and provided written submissions. We certainly considered all the submissions, as well as previous reports, and ultimately made 10 recommendations.
I think from a philosophical point of view the committee took the approach that people who live in the ACT deserve the same recognition under law as our neighbours in the six states. As such, the report is a principle-based report for the next Assembly to consider when deciding how to respond to the report. This relates to discussions surrounding the inclusion of a preamble, the size of the Assembly and restrictions on law-making powers of the Assembly.
A number of amendments also relate to technical amendments that clarify existing recommendations. In that regard I particularly point to recommendations around conflict of interest and matters raised by the Electoral Commissioner about the qualification of electors in the ACT. And other matters, whilst perhaps not headline-type matters that probably will not make the Canberra Times tomorrow, are important, particularly taking this opportunity, if we are to see the commonwealth make amendments, to clarify areas that would warrant that bit of tidying up.
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