Chief Minister Kate Carnell and her predecessor shadow attorney-general Rosemary Follett have both rightly encouraged a wider range of candidates for Act Legislative Assembly elections. Ms Follett pointed to the silly rule in the federal ACT Self-Government Act that forbids anyone holding an office of profit under the Crown from standing as a candidate. That means, in effect, that public servants have to resign before standing with no guarantee of getting their job back if they fail. And certainly, if they win a seat, there is no prospect of getting their job back. In the ACT, this is a bar to about 45 per cent of the workforce. It should be removed. If the Assembly requests it, the Federal Parliament should agree, even if it reveals the folly of a similar defect in the provisions for Federal Parliament.
Mrs Carnell was speaking on the eighth anniversary of self-government. She said self-government and the Assembly should not be seen as the cause of the ACT’s woes, but the vehicle for fixing them. She rightly pointed out that the Federal Government had defaulted on the terms of self-government by slashing funding to the territory and not taking a proper interest in the national elements of the national capital. However, there was not turning back the clock and on the funding terms given since 1989 direct rule by the Federal Government would not have produced as good a result as self-government. Those people who opposed self-government and attacked the Assembly should stand for it and get it to do a better job, she said.
There is merit in that argument. The quality of government will depend on the quality of the people in it. Everything possible should be done to encourage good candidates to stand.