The appointment of a Government Reform Advisory Group by the ACT Government satisfies an election promise by the Liberal Party, but other than that is a complete waste of time. Mercifully, it will cost only $20,000.Kate Carnell said in the he lead-up to the election that government arrangements since self-government in 1989 had been cumbersome, costly and adversarial. A city council style would be more effective. Presumably, she picked up whatever remnant anti-self-government vote was around in the absence of Dennis Stevenson who had recognised by then that it was not enough to get him a 12 per cent quota. The idea has now served its political purpose and should be taken off the agenda as quickly as possible.
There is no merit in the councils proposal. Councils can be just as adversarial as a Westminster parliament _ witness a hundred councils around the country that have divided on party lines or developer-green lines. They can be more costly _ as the Brisbane experience shows. And they can be just as cumbersome an ineffective and equally likely to send the contents of the too-hard basket to committees. Of greater significance, the council system seems far more susceptible to corruption than the Westminster system with Ministers responsible to a Parliament and answerable at Question Time.
The people of Australia, through their national Parliament, have imposed the duty of democracy on the ACT, giving residents of the ACT a form of limited parliamentary democracy with powers over municipal service, criminal law, police, land, planning, health, education, to name the most important. Six years later, it is likely (but untested) that the sentiment expressed in the 1977 referendum is out of date and that a majority of people in the ACT would like to have control of those things through elected representatives. It is untenable that that range of powers and an economy larger than Tasmania’s could be properly controlled by a council. If there were to be a council, slabs of power would have to be handed back to the Federal Government (or perhaps to NSW) _ notable health and education. It is not going to happen because it would require federal legislation.
The Chief Minister should forget the town council and continue the more important task of making the present system work better. To that end she, the previous Government and the Independents have some runs on the board with the creation of a separate Public Service with clear rules on public servants’ rights and duties, a more effective committee system in the Assembly, making the commercial part of government more effective with things like the corporatisation of ACTEW, the introduction of accrual accounting and making many Executive appointments and other Executive acts subject to Assembly veto.
Some further reforms (rather than wholesale dismantling) are needed. For example, the Liberals and others in the Assembly who profess to listen the people’s will should carry through the legislation on citizen’s initiated referendums that lapsed last year.
Costs, and the cumbersome and adversary nature of ACT governance are more a function of the people in it than the system they are working under.