Page 2291 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 1 August 2017
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non-binding plebiscite on the issue. Presumably, this is what was felt: he was hoping to arrive at a different outcome via the plebiscite.
He has subsequently abandoned this proposal, which I think was very sensible on his part. But what has happened in South Australia is that there was an initial promise to take it seriously. Then the results of the consultation process—the citizens jury—were dismissed. I think this has seriously damaged the trust of the South Australian community in a citizens jury process.
In the South Australian case, for the consultation to be meaningful the government really needed to commit to supporting the findings of the citizens jury. I think this is going to be one of the things that will be really important for the ACT government in examining the citizens jury process. What are the things where government can be clear about the level of commitment that will be given to the outcome of consultation?
This is something that is an ongoing source of community concern. The community will often say, “We were consulted. We went to the meeting. We filled in the thing on the website”—whatever, whatever—“but we think the decision was already made beforehand. It was sham consultation.” This is the sort of thing that really annoys the public, that really means consultation does not work. That is one of the things that is important. Consultation must be real. I am very pleased that Ms Stephen-Smith talked about information as distinct from consultation, because this is really important.
People need to know when they are being informed and when they are being consulted. I have just mentioned participatory budgeting as a potential option. I note that the parliamentary agreement talks about a review of the budget process for this year and this is a potential way the review could happen.
There is something else I would just like to mention in terms of open and consultative democracy that I have very recently been involved in. Tomorrow morning I hope to table a revised draft of my bill, the Crimes (Invasion of Privacy) Amendment Bill. I was very fortunate that I was able to send out letters to 60 different organisations and individuals and received 17 substantive responses on this. I am saying this to highlight that while clearly consultation is easier for organisations with the resources of government, it is something that all of us in our day-to-day lives as MLAs need to look at. It is something that in this instance has been incredibly important to us.
The lease variation charge is another area where we have been talking today about consultation, or, in the instance of the lease variation charge, total lack of consultation. The government has recently decided to impose a fourfold increase in the LVC charge, but there was no industry consultation and there was no modelling done on it. This is why we saw that huge flurry just at the end of June. I think there were 149 applications for lease variations in those three weeks, which was equivalent to about five years of normal traffic.
Clearly, that is not the way to do open and consultative democracy. It is also not the way really to do taxation, where I think you need to look at the impact of taxation decisions. While clearly the Greens support the government in raising taxation and support the idea that windfall gains should at least partially accrue to government, we
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