Page 30 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 February 2016
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crime by recognising that victims’ interests are tantamount to human rights. The services of the Victims of Crime Commissioner and the other commissioners will, by necessity, remain somewhat separate, but there are administrative efficiencies and benefits of collocating them in the same agency.
I will take this opportunity to address a slightly broader issue and one that I have raised before. I think we in the ACT should be looking at a model whereby the human rights commissioners and also the environment commissioner are officers of the parliament—that is, rather than being connected with the JACS Directorate or the Environment and Planning Directorate, in the case of the environment commissioner, they are independent officers of the Legislative Assembly, appointed by the Speaker in consultation with the leaders of the parties elected to the Assembly and on advice from the public accounts committee.
The key defining factors of officers of the parliament or of the Assembly, as we would call them, is that their governance arrangements are based on a relationship with the parliament rather than with executive government. This is the case already in the ACT for the Auditor-General, our three electoral commissioners and the Ombudsman. This structure, achieved through the passing of the Officers of the Assembly Legislation Amendment Act 2013, was a result of the parliamentary agreement the Greens made with the ALP in 2012. Members may remember that I presented that legislation as executive members business and it gained tripartisan support.
If the human rights commissioners and environment commissioner operated under the current arrangements for officers of the Assembly, their budget would be established by the Legislative Assembly in consultation with relevant standing committees and the Speaker. The Treasurer would ultimately decide whether to accept the budget, but would have to justify the decision to the Assembly. Instead of setting out strategic directions in a protocol between the directorate and the commission, as proposed in this legislation, the Human Rights Commission could operate as the Auditor-General does. In the case of the Auditor-General the office sets its directions and policies but the Legislative Assembly carries out a strategic review of the office once each term of the Assembly as determined by the public accounts committee.
Although a proposal to have the human rights and environment commissioners as officers of the Assembly might seem unfamiliar in the Australian context, it is a model that is used in other commonwealth countries. For example, New Zealand’s Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is an officer of the parliament, as are the human rights commissioners in Northern Ireland, Scotland and South Africa.
While the changes we are debating today are reasonable, I am interested in the structure I have just described—one that clearly separates these commissioners from the executive and emphasises their independence. I have raised this issue before when the committee looked at this issue last term—at that time the administration and procedure committee. The committee did not agree that the human rights commissioners and the environment commissioner should be added at that time. Ultimately, the other ones that I have already spoken of were put into that legislation. There is scope to simply add further commissioners within that existing legislation.
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