Page 3140 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 16 September 2015
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Mr Doszpot has asked—and he has repeated it again today in his motion—for details about those who conducted the investigation. The minister has made it clear in point (d) of her amendment that the inquiry was conducted by investigators from Shared Services employee relations. The information is there. I am not sure what other information is needed in that space. Do we need to identify the individual officials involved? Again, I am not sure what that adds to the discussion. The minister has answered that in question time today when asked who undertook the investigation. She has been very clear that it is somebody that is not connected to the directorate.
Point (f) is quite important. I think that this goes to some of the key questions. The director-general is examining the role of each member of the directorate staff in this process. Those members of staff who had information or had some level of report provided to them clearly did not act as they should have. They did not treat the information provided to them with the seriousness that this place and members of the community would have anticipated.
That is a matter for the director-general to resolve. Directors-general are required to supervise their staff and to undertake disciplinary procedures as required in accordance with the enterprise agreements that govern the public service. Again, I would welcome clarity from Mr Doszpot on what he wants out of that process. I guess we have to work out what the standard is. Is this Assembly going to second-guess directors-general in these matters? Are we going to intervene in disciplinary processes in public service departments?
The system is not set up to operate in that way. If we think that that is not right then we need to change the governing legislation around these matters. I accept that the director-general is conducting that investigation and will take the necessary steps, and that is also for the minister to follow through on and ensure that she is satisfied that the director-general is delivering on that.
Finally, the Shaddock review that has been set up, conducted by Professor Shaddock, goes to what are, to me, very important questions. He is looking at the broader systemic issues to question whether the ACT has the right structures in place to support both the students and the educational staff who are dealing with students with learning difficulties, special needs, challenging behaviours and the like.
This is going to be a very important report. I welcome the fact that it will be provided to the Standing Committee on Education, Training and Youth Affairs. It will enable the Assembly to dissect the very important policy matters that warrant further discussion on this case.
For those reasons I will be supporting the amendment put forward by Minister Burch today. I know that this place will continue to monitor, particularly, the outcomes of this review being conducted by Professor Shaddock. To my mind, between that and the work done by the director-general to pursue an investigation within her directorate to ensure that staff are appropriately dealt with off the back of this matter, these are the questions that need to be followed through and resolved.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video