Page 2173 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 5 June 2019
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I am grateful for community organisations like the Canberra Japan Club. This past weekend’s autumn festival provided a small insight into what the club, its president and its many committed members do. Their efforts help to preserve and share Japanese language and culture, and this in turn enriches and strengthens our entire Canberra community.
I wish Mrs Lamb and her colleagues in the Canberra Japan Club all the best success as they continue to serve. The event this past weekend was certainly a fruitful harvest of their dedicated efforts.
ACT public service—questions on notice
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (5.50): It is easy for crossbench and opposition members to get cynical about the government and the public service. We spend a significant part of each day fielding complaints from the community about things that have gone wrong. We only hear one side of the story and we do not know much of the background. Sometimes we also feel like we are given the run-around or are not getting straight answers. Against that, I think it is important to also acknowledge the good work that does get done. Today I would like to acknowledge the time and effort the public service puts into responding to questions on notice.
I would particularly like to single out the officers who responded to two recent questions on notice: the treasury officers who responded to question 2416 about land tax, and the planning officers who responded to question 2407 about Kippax group centre. I am particularly singling out these questions because both of them were long and complex. I am sure that when these questions arrived in the directorates the action officers were not particularly happy with me. One of them took over six hours to complete and the other over four hours. I am sure the officers who did the work felt they had better things to do. However, they did not come up with glib weasel words or give me pointless non-information. They took the time to give me some very useful responses, and that is very much appreciated.
Questions on notice may sometimes seem like a time-consuming pain in the neck that diverts the public service into political time-wasting. However, they are in fact an important part of the transparency and accountability of government. Sometimes questions do serve a political purpose, but more often they are serving the community and may have a political purpose as well. In the case of questions 2416 and 2407, both questions were largely asked on behalf of members of the community. The responses to these questions will help the community to understand important policy issues.
Sometimes the public service gets questions from me, and possibly other backbench MLAs, that I am sure I could with some effort work out for myself. I am sure it is frustrating for the officers working on answers, and I am sure that they sometimes grumble about politicians asking dumb questions. The questions with these obvious answers are very often asked on behalf of a community group or constituent. People in the community can find it much harder than we do to find and understand government information. Sometimes people need to have an answer in writing in the
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