Page 2146 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 2 August 2016
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is suspected. It will also, importantly, undertake prevention through education and support for agencies and offices to improve policies and procedures where necessary. That is also a proactive role. It is about saying that through continual improvement you can avoid some of these things arising, because prevention is a very important component of this announcement.
The ACT is unusual in not having an independent investigative integrity body and we believe it is time to change. Even the Northern Territory is on its way to putting an integrity commission in place. For all the interjections that are going on and all the silly comments that have been made in the chamber today, it is actually about being on the front foot. Every jurisdiction has something like this in place and we believe there is scope to do something similar.
If we want the community to place their trust in us, and if we are genuinely putting the community’s needs first, then we need to have the mechanisms in place to shine a spotlight into the darker corners. An integrity commission is just another way to build that confidence. I think it builds on the sorts of measures that we have already put in place. Mr Barr outlined a number of them today, and I believe that this is about continuing to move forward; it is a process of continual improvement.
I want to be clear here: part of the reason that the Greens have made this commitment is because we believe in building the capacity of governance to be able to assure the community that misconduct or corruption is not occurring, not because we believe that corruption or misconduct is occurring.
As I was asked and as I answered in the chamber today, albeit under a fairly dubious line of questioning, I have not had any specific allegations raised with me about specific acts of misconduct. People go round and say things, just like the Liberal Party are willing to do. They will stand up and say things when they have not got the evidence to put forward. Mr Hanson had a go at me in a debate today saying, “Well, if you’ve got evidence, why don’t you take it to the police or somebody?” I have not said I have got evidence; I have said people have made passing comments to me. The very comment I made in launching this policy on Sunday—and I have repeated it here today—was that it is all about the community having confidence. When people raise concerns, that confidence is undermined. We need to make sure that we have the mechanisms in place so that, if somebody genuinely believes they have some evidence, they have got a place to take it.
People in the community have communicated disquiet to me, and that is why I think we should have a mechanism in place to address that disquiet. I do not think it is good enough that there can be rumours and innuendo and that there is no place for those to be investigated, but nor is there a place for people to put up or shut up. We have a Liberal Party that are happy to cast all the aspersions they like and they are happy for the innuendo to swirl around without actually having evidence to back it up. What we are doing here is creating a mechanism so that they have to put up or shut up as well. They have either got the evidence, and they have to put it on the table, or they need to quieten up.
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