Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Main Committee is an appropriate place for debate on reports of committees. The parliament has an undeservedly bad reputation in the Australian community as a place of conflict, difference and argument. But so often parliamentary committees bring down unanimous reports which indicate that members have sat down around a table, listened to the evidence they have received and brought forward recommendations which, hopefully, the government of the day will adopt. This inquiry into whistleblower protection was referred to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs by the Attorney-General and, once again, this committee has brought down a unanimous report. In the previous parliament, I was the chairman of the committee, and all of our reports were unanimous. I am pleased that the 26 recommendations in this report, entitled Whistleblower protection: a comprehensive scheme for the Commonwealth public sector, enjoy the support of the full committee.

I do not believe that in 2009 anyone could realistically argue that there ought not to be protection for whistleblowers. We believe in openness, accountability and transparency in government and, without adequate whistleblower protection, we simply would not achieve the high standards that in Australia we have come to expect of governments. I must say that I think we are fortunate in Australia, generally speaking, to have a high level of integrity in the administration of governments at all levels. We have very low levels of corruption, and I think that is one of the things that, as Australians, we ought to be proud of. But the committee did recommend in the report tabled this week in the parliament that a bill, to be entitled the Public Interest Disclosure Bill, should be introduced as quickly as possible, and the principles of this bill would be to promote accountability and integrity in public administration.

In recommendation 2, the committee was very keen to ensure:

… the provisions of the Bill are guided by the following principles:

• it is in the public interest that accountability and integrity in public administration are promoted by identifying and addressing wrongdoing in the public sector;
• people within the public sector have a right to raise their concerns about wrongdoing within the sector without fear of reprisal;
• people have a responsibility to raise those concerns in good faith;
• governments have a right to consider policy and administration in private; and
• government and the public sector have a responsibility to be receptive to concerns which are raised.

In recommendation 3:

The Committee recommends that the Public Interest Disclosure Bill define people who are entitled to make a protected disclosure as a ‘public official’ and include in the definition of public official the following categories:

• Australian Government and general government sector employees …
• contractors and consultants engaged by the public sector;
• employees of contractors and consultants engaged by the public sector;
• Australian and locally engaged staff working overseas;
• members of the Australian Defence Force and Australian Federal Police;
• parliamentary staff;
• former employees in one of the above categories; and
• anonymous persons likely to be in one of the above categories.

Personally I was very pleased that the report sought to extend protection to contractors and consultants engaged by the public sector. While we have had in place certain rules and regulations designed to protect whistleblowers in certain circumstances, the circumstances covered by the existing provisions are not wide enough, and that is why the House of Representatives committee has recommended the introduction and swift passage of the Public Interest Disclosure Bill. The committee would have liked to see this bill introduced yesterday, but we are realists and we do understand that the parliamentary timetable does have a queue of bills. In a prior manifestation, when the coalition was in government, I was well aware of how long it took sometimes to get legislation through the parliament. But I hope, given the fact that this is non-controversial legislation, at least within the parliament—or we hope it is—that this legislation will be accorded the sort of priority it needs so that the protections sought for whistleblowers by the members of the committee will be able to be enshrined in legislation.

The committee secretariat always displays a very high level of impartiality, competence and professionalism. I would like to recognise the members of the secretariat staff publicly in the Main Committee today. Our parliamentary committees would not be able to operate if it were not for the expertise that the officials seconded to those committees and who work with those committees bring. I believe that committee staff often help to create a sense of camaraderie within the committee, and that can ensure that quite often we are able to achieve unanimous reports. Reports that are tabled in the parliament without dissent are very much more powerful and convincing reports than those which are rammed through with the government of the day using the majority it has on all parliamentary committees in the House of Representatives. I think that it is important, wherever possible, to seek to obtain a unanimous report, because that report has a much greater chance of being implemented.

I am particularly pleased to commend this report, Whistleblower protection: a comprehensive scheme for the Commonwealth public sector, to the House. I hope that the government responds expeditiously, that the government, in its response, accepts the recommendations of the committee and that we see introduced to the parliament as a matter of urgency the Public Interest Disclosure Bill.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to echo the Deputy Chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in thanking the committee secretariat, particularly Dr Anna Dacre, Dr Mark Rodrigues, Mr Michael Buss, Ms Melita Caulfield and Ms Claire Young, for the wonderful work they do. They make us look good. They do superb work. They are fantastic in the work they do. The research they undertake and the drafting they do is expert, and they are across the issues. I want to pay tribute also to Dr AJ Brown, who heads the ‘Whistling while they work: enhancing the theory and practice of internal witness management in public sector organisations’ team. This is a group of eminent academics and professors who have worked extensively to find out just what evidence there is in relation to whistleblowing and to provide empirical data which will help governments to form a better understanding and better legislation when it comes to public interest disclosure.

Dr AJ Brown found that the typical view of a whistleblower is not correct. In fact, whistleblowers are likely to be women and to have a very positive attitude towards corporate citizenship, but they are less likely to have a positive view of the managerial oversight of their respective government departments. Dr Brown also found that the media is the ninth recipient of public interest disclosures. So the idea that whistleblowers go straight to the media is not correct. There is also evidence that only 20 per cent of whistleblowers end up being treated adversely in the workplace by their peers or by their superiors, which again is not what the community would normally think in the circumstances.

The real reason we need to have a public interest disclosure bill introduced as soon as possible is that there is a deficiency when it comes to the Public Service and those people who contract to the Commonwealth or volunteer for Commonwealth government activity. Only about two-thirds of Commonwealth public sector employees in the Australian Public Service are covered by APS whistleblower provisions. Of course, employees who work for those agencies which are governed by the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997 are specifically included. They include employees of the ANU, the ABC and a variety of other corporate governmental agencies. So public interest disclosures are very important to deal with from the point of view of a model piece of legislation and a national approach.

We are not talking about internal grievances and internal management disputes. We are really talking about serious disclosures: evidence of illegal activity, corruption, maladministration, dangers to public safety, dangers to the environment, official misconduct and scientific misconduct—serious matters which adversely affect the public interest. The committee recommended that those types of disclosures be protected and recommended the expansion in the categories of people who make those disclosures to encompass Commonwealth agencies and insider knowledge. For example, those people who are deemed to be public officials for the purpose of the legislation would also be covered, as well as volunteers. So there is breadth in the coverage. With respect to the way this is dealt with, there is a staged approach. The first port of call for a whistleblower is to deal with their matter internally with their superiors. Then they go to an external agency, and finally there is the safety valve of the media if it is absolutely necessary.

There was discussion and submission about which particular body or bodies should be involved in the oversight of whistleblowing legislation. The committee believed—and I agree; it was a unanimous decision—that the Commonwealth Ombudsman has the oversight and the integrity agency requirements to do these sorts of tasks. The Australian Public Service Commissioner and the Commonwealth Ombudsman gave evidence in relation to the additional costs involved in this process. They gave evidence that it would cost an additional $1.5 million initially and recommended that a deputy be appointed for this purpose in the various agencies. They also said that after two or three years the cost would be about $1 million to the Commonwealth with six to seven employees. I concur with the committee’s decision that the Commonwealth Ombudsman has the appropriate skills, expertise and experience to handle these really difficult, sensitive and serious matters. The research shows that that is the case. The evidence before the committee shows that this should be the avenue that people take if internal matters have not been dealt with properly.

There is a subjective test that the committee recommends with respect to whistleblowing. The whistleblower must have an honest and reasonable belief on the information available to them that the matter concerns disclosable conduct. The committee rejected the objective test, which was that the disclosure showed or tended to show wrongdoing. We thought that would not lead towards good public policy and that there would be people who would be dissuaded from coming forward with disclosures. We are not about protecting false allegations or reckless disclosures but we are about good public policy. The committee appropriately rejected the idea of a qui tam provision in the public interest disclosure legislation. The idea of pecuniary profit or incentivisation for a disclosure to be made is simply anathema to me, and I certainly agree with the committee’s recommendation that we should look at the public good and a more communitarian approach to public disclosure. We should look at an approach that does not follow the American system in these circumstances.

I conclude by saying that we have taken note of what the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has said in relation to the matter. We have specifically excluded a number of intelligence agencies, such as ASIO, ASIS and the ONA, from this public interest disclosure legislation in our recommendations. I urge the government to act upon this and act quickly. We would have liked to see this happen under the previous government’s regime but we urge the government to take note of these recommendations, which in our view will help to overcome what I would describe as the governmental vices of secrecy, victimisation, inflexibility and buck-passing and will promote what I would describe as the governmental virtues of openness, transparency, flexibility and accountability. I am very pleased to be a member of the committee, and I thank all those people who participated. I particularly want to recognise the admirable qualities of the chairperson, the member for Isaacs, who did the job exceptionally well.

Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak to the report from the Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs arising from the inquiry into whistleblowing protection within the Australian government public sector. This report set out to ask the question of ‘how’ we should protect whistleblowers, not ‘if’ we should protect them. As noted in my submission to the inquiry, the statutory protection of whistleblowers—individuals who make a principled public interest disclosure of wrongdoing—can no longer be regarded as a new or controversial area in mainstream Australia.

From 1993, commencing with the response to the 1989 report of the Fitzgerald commission of inquiry into official misconduct in Queensland, whistleblower laws have been enacted in the Australian states and territories. The key feature of the approach taken in Australia has been the recognition that the ultimate objective of whistleblower protection law and policy, properly understood, is not the protection of whistleblowers as such. Protection is a crucial strategy for achieving the main objective: to encourage the disclosure of wrongdoing, fraud, waste, misconduct, abuse, corruption, imminent danger et cetera in an appropriate way so that something can be done about it. Practical concern about the public interest, rather than moralism, is the key. New laws to protect public interest disclosure of wrongdoing in broadly similar terms have also been enacted since 1994 in Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Africa and the United Nations secretariat.

There is now broad acceptance in Australia of a public interest justification for effective and practical protection of responsible whistleblowers and for whistleblowing activity by public officials and others occupying positions of trust. There appears to be no serious suggestion in any quarter that those who genuinely disclose official corruption, fraud, theft, criminal conduct, abuse of office, serious threat to public health and safety, official misconduct, maladministration or avoidable wastage of public resources should not receive protection from retaliation by those involved. On the contrary, organisations which fail to protect genuine whistleblowers and permit or take reprisal action against them usually face severe censure. However, incredibly, until now in the Australian government sector the issue of protection of whistleblowers has remained an open question for no apparent reason. The Australian Public Service lacks adequate statutory provisions protecting public servants despite numerous formal inquiries, a significant number of noteworthy cases and eventually, in 1999, the provision of minimal protections in the Public Service Act for a very limited form of whistleblowing activity.

During my time working for the United Nations, I was involved in setting up a UN Ethics Office in New York, putting in place standards and programs to reinforce a culture of integrity, to enhance transparency and accountability and to restore public faith in the organisation. The UN needed to apply to itself the very global standards whose setting it had facilitated, especially in the light of the public perception of corruption in UN agencies arising from the oil for food investigation. The new measures included new financial disclosure policies, conflict of interest provisions, training, advice, standard-setting functions and, importantly, whistleblower protection. The primary focus of the Ethics Office was not intended as another layer of policing for the organisation, which already had an Office of Internal Oversight Services, but as a resource to which staff could turn for advice on ethical issues, such as potential or actual conflicts of interest, and for whistleblower protection.

Whistleblower protection is actually a measure of last resort. External whistleblowing is an indicator of a failure of ethics. There is something wrong within the workplace integrity system if a person who has concerns about wrongdoing is not able to have those concerns addressed internally without fear of the consequences. Ultimately you want to achieve a situation where whistleblowing as such is not necessary because there exists in the workplace a culture that encourages people to raise their concerns as a normal part of their duties. Until that situation exists, however, whistleblower protection will be necessary.

Public debate about the responsibilities of governments and public officials, and in particular about what we should expect by way of accountability, integrity and ethics, is crucial to the health of Australian democracy, and I am delighted that this discussion is taking place within government, within the parliament and within civil society. Some people think that we do not really need to have a discussion about accountability in Australia, as corruption in government and unethical conduct by public servants only happen ‘out there’, in other, less developed, less democratic and less well-regulated countries. Aside from being untrue, this argument misses what is for me an essential issue: accountability is all about the uses of power and is especially about the delegated power which is exercised by officials away from public scrutiny. There is a fundamental duty for public officials at all levels to account for how power was exercised to those who are not in a position to check for themselves that it was, in fact, exercised fairly, lawfully and legitimately. Establishing formal responsibility for accountability in public office is, of course, only part of the task. Putting formal responsibility into practice is the real challenge.

From time to time there have been signs that our public institutions are failing in this challenge. Probably our biggest integrity failure of all resulted in the colossal scandal of the Australian Wheat Board, which in 2006 emerged as the single largest source of kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime, to the tune of $290 million through fraud on the UN’s oil for food program. This episode stood as a stark indicator that there was something seriously amiss in our accountability framework, not least because those involved continued to characterise and justify their behaviour as the cost of doing business rather than recognising and naming it, as Commissioner Terrence Cole did, as a failure of ethics at the most fundamental level. In my view, the acquiescence and deceptive conduct by some parts of the Public Service and by relevant ministers and their staff during this period, which continued for years, indicates that the problem was not confined to a lack of corporate ethics. It showed an irresponsible failure on the part of those involved to recognise that the AWB’s interests were not the only interests to be considered and that failure to take account of broader public interest concerns would ultimately become a matter for public accountability and justification. As a result, Australia’s international reputation was severely damaged.

I believe that author Catherine Aird could have been referring to the Australian Wheat Board when she said, ‘If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to serve as a horrible warning.’ Other horrible warnings during the past decade have included the children overboard episode and Australia’s abandonment of the international rule of law through its participation in the Iraq war, to name a couple. Within each of these incidents, there were public servants and others who had severe doubts about the legitimacy of the government’s actions or, worse, knew that they were wrong but were afraid to speak out. I note that this committee received over 70 submissions and heard from more than 70 witnesses. The level of public engagement on this issue shows that there is an urgent need for legislation in this area.

My own submission to this inquiry argued for the passing of a public interest disclosures act and for such an act to cover all public sector staff, including the staff of members of parliament and non-Commonwealth employees working for Commonwealth agencies. I commend the committee for recommending a public interest disclosures bill as well as for the types of disclosures and the categories of people recommended for protection. The inclusion of not only Commonwealth Public Service staff but also parliamentary staff, government consultants and contractors is welcome. I also strongly support the role proposed for the Commonwealth Ombudsman. In my role as Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, I welcome the committee’s recommendation that the proposed public interest disclosures bill specifically provide for the Commissioner for Law Enforcement Integrity to be able to investigate public interest disclosures relevant to the commissioner’s area of responsibility. This raises again the crucial issue of adequate resources for these agencies to be able to carry out their roles effectively.

As we follow our colleagues in the states and territories and countries including Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Japan and South Africa, I hope that we not only enact laws to protect whistleblowers but also administer these laws in a way that makes them effective. What is lacking in the Australian states and territories is not good laws but effective administrative and organisational support for whistleblowers and would-be whistleblowers and more accessible mechanisms for compensation and protection. This was demonstrated by the wide-ranging research project Whistling while they work, a three-year collaborative national research project led by Griffith University.

It is clear from the committee’s report that the discussion of whistleblower protection in Australia does not stop with the introduction and passing of a public interest disclosures bill. The further questions raised in the report of topics outside the direct terms of reference of the committee will need to be addressed by parliament in the coming years. This includes protection from disclosure of wrongdoing in the private sector. Other countries have legislated protection for those working in the private sector, such as the UK Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, which has proved effective in thousands of cases in both the public sector and the private sector.

Of importance too is the need for education and awareness-raising activities for employees and managers about the values of transparency and accountability which will lead to a changing workplace culture that encourages public interest disclosure with appropriate support mechanisms for whistleblowers. I note that an education and awareness-raising function is intended to be part of the extended role of the Commonwealth Ombudsman, and I welcome the suggestion in the committee’s report. This report has been well received by one of the key stakeholders, the Community and Public Sector Union. The union has commended the report and asked that the relevant legislation be introduced to put the report’s recommendations into law so that public sector workers are no longer forced to make a choice between disclosing matters in the public interest and their job security and careers.

The recommendations contained in the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs are eminently sensible and the reforms are long overdue. I congratulate the committee for its hard work, in particular the chair, the member for Isaacs, and also the Attorney-General, who requested on behalf of the Cabinet Secretary that this inquiry occur. I welcome Minister Faulkner’s commitment to respond quickly to the report and to introduce whistleblower protection legislation in this term of parliament. The government recognises the crucial role both of people and processes in ensuring public confidence in the integrity of our public institutions. Without good institutions good people will fail, and without good people good institutions are ineffective.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—Can I thank other members of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, including the deputy chair of the committee, the member for Fisher, and the member for Blair, for speaking to the report and also thank them for their participation in the committee’s deliberations on this important matter. Could I also thank the member for Fremantle for the speech that we have just heard, because it went a long way towards setting the context of accountability, transparency and integrity in public administration, putting it in an international context and drawing on the work that we know that the member for Fremantle has done overseas. It is important to recognise that a scheme of protection for whistleblowers taking legislative form is but one of a range of measures in this area of improving transparency, improving accountability and improving integrity of government.

We have recommended a comprehensive scheme, and a scheme which is very long overdue. It is a scheme that is of course intended to protect workers in the public sector who speak out about wrongdoing. The focus is on improving accountability, improving integrity in public administration. As we say in the report, it is not just about introducing legislation. It is about, through that scheme of legislation and through procedures adopted by public sector agencies, creating a culture in which public servants and all who work in the public sector are encouraged to speak out when they see wrongdoing or maladministration in their workplace.

I have said it is long overdue, and perhaps one could demonstrate that by pointing to the fact that there is already in every state and territory in Australia, as well as in a whole range of overseas jurisdictions, legislation that provides protection for whistleblowers. But one can say it is long overdue also because going back some 14 years there have been numerous reviews and attempts made to introduce this type of legislation at the Commonwealth level. You could start with the 1994 report from the Senate Select Committee on Public Interest Whistleblowing, which was entitled In the public interest. That was an all-party committee. It made a very comprehensive set of recommendations with, perhaps one can say with hindsight, a somewhat elaborate scheme. Perhaps the elaborateness of the scheme that was recommended by the Senate select committee in 1994 is what led, first of all, to a very long delay in a response by the former Keating government, which did not come until November 1995. While the government accepted quite a number of the recommendations of that Senate committee and indicated that it was going to move to introduce legislation, the election of March 1996 brought that promise to an end. The new coalition government abandoned the preparation of specific legislation on whistleblowing. There was very, very limited protection introduced in the Public Service Bill that was introduced in 1997, and the provisions that were introduced then found their way into section 16 of the Public Service Act.

But, even then, there was very serious criticism by two parliamentary committees. The Joint Committee of Public Accounts, in its report of September 1997, and the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, in its report of October 1997, were both critical of the very limited whistleblower protections that were proposed in that Public Service Bill. Those provisions did, however, come into force in 1999 and are still there in section 16 of the Public Service Act. Since then, there have been no fewer than three private member’s bills, introduced by Senator Andrew Murray in 2001, 2002 and 2007, dealing with whistleblower protection or public interest disclosure. But, without any support from the former government, each of those three bills proposed by Senator Murray lapsed.

There is one benefit only of the long delay we have seen in introducing legislation at the Commonwealth level, and that is that it has enabled this committee and also the government to consider the lessons that are to be learnt from, in some cases, over a decade of experience in the states and territories of this kind of legislation. The committee, and so too the government, has also had the benefit of a whole range of research work that has been conducted by a three-year project headed by Dr AJ Brown of Griffith University. This project has been referred to extensively by the committee in its deliberations, and it has been referred to by other speakers on this report. In that ‘Whistle while they work’ project, as it was entitled, Dr AJ Brown and his colleagues were able to conduct research across thousands of workplaces by means of survey work and direct interview, as well as holding their own seminars and producing discussion papers over that lengthy period. The situation produced by that is that the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs was in a position that standing committees do not often find themselves in, which was that all of that research work was available to the committee, and we were able to take full advantage of it.

The report produced by the ‘Whistle while they work’ project in early September last year contained such helpful sections as a complete analysis of all of the state and territory legislation, including analysis of the deficiencies discovered in each of those state and territory schemes, and also recorded the results of the empirical research work done by the ‘Whistle while they work’ project. Interestingly, one of the conclusions expressed was that, contrary to the popular perception, people who blow the whistle in their workplace do not always suffer. Very often there is a full investigation of the matters raised and, as should be the case, the whistleblower is commended for disclosing the matter of concern.

What the legislation that this report deals with is aimed at is the other situation—with which we are all too familiar—where someone who has made an allegation of wrongdoing, maladministration, corruption or the like within their workplace does suffer in a range of ways. The proposal is that a very large group of public servants and those working in the public sector are to be protected. That is perhaps the core recommendation of the report. Casting the net so widely will ensure that the legislation covers not just those people who are employed under the Public Service Act, which captures in effect only about two-thirds of public servants. It is proposed that the legislation would cover everybody who works for a Commonwealth agency, everybody who works for a Commonwealth corporation and everybody who works for a company that is contracting to the Commonwealth, and it will include a mechanism that recognises even people who are volunteers within corporations or organisations that are connected with the Commonwealth public sector. As was commented on by Dr AJ Brown at the press conference that followed the tabling of the report yesterday, that coverage is very important because it is important that everyone involved in the public sector knows that, if they discover wrongdoing and make a disclosure in respect of that wrongdoing, they will be protected.

Another important feature of the scheme of legislation that the committee has recommended is that it would set up a procedure for making a disclosure and then impose obligations on public sector agencies who receive disclosures. It is important that the legislation specify a set of procedures, because one of the things that the committee wanted to ensure was that people who are contemplating making a disclosure be able to determine, by ready reference either to the legislation or to guidelines that we hope will be prepared based on the legislation, that they are eligible for protection and the procedures that they need to follow in order to gain that protection. They will also be able to readily see that there are obligations on the agencies to which they make the disclosure to go on and investigate the matter and, further, that there are remedies available to them if that does not occur.

It is very important to ensure that the protection that is afforded by the legislation achieves the purpose that it is aimed at and that the person considering the disclosure be able to see just how the protection is going to work. The purpose which the legislation is aimed at is, of course, improving integrity and accountability in public administration and improving the already high quality of public administration in this country. Unless those considering making a disclosure can see at a glance that they are going to be protected, there will be continuing discouragement from engaging in whistleblowing activity.

There are a range of other aspects of the legislation that I would like to mention. Another is the sequential nature of disclosure that is proposed by the recommended scheme of legislation, and by that I mean that it is proposed that those wishing to make a disclosure first make the disclosure to the agency that they work for or are connected to and then that the legislation provide for the possibility of disclosure to another, more central Commonwealth agency apart from the agency that the whistleblower is connected to. There is a recommendation that the Commonwealth Ombudsman be the central oversight agency for the whole scheme of the legislation, but other recommendations for the legislation are that it would be possible to make the disclosure not only to the Commonwealth Ombudsman but also, at a general level, to the Australian Public Service Commissioner and her colleague, the Merit Protection Commissioner.

There are further recommendations that would provide for disclosures to be made to a range of agencies specialised in their particular area—for example, in the intelligence and security area, we have recommended that the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security be authorised to receive disclosures, as is the Commonwealth Ombudsman for that purpose. For other specialised areas, we have recommended that such agencies as the Aged Care Commissioner, the Integrity Commissioner, who was mentioned by the member for Fremantle, the Commissioner for Complaints of the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Inspector-General in the Department of Defence and the Privacy Commissioner all be able to receive disclosures about wrongdoing that are directly relevant to their area of expertise.

Following the tabling at the press conference yesterday, Dr AJ Brown also noted the recommendations that the committee has made in respect of the legislation needing to include a set of obligations for managers, Dr Brown making the point that that is an important obligation. Dr Brown also commended the recommendations for external oversight and coordination by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, and I can say to the House that the reason the Commonwealth Ombudsman was selected is that it is regarded by the committee as being the Commonwealth agency with the most expertise in investigating complaints and is recognised across the public service—and, indeed, in the wider community—as being the agency that was established for that purpose.

As has already been noted, the report of the committee has been very well received in most quarters. Senator Faulkner, the Special Minister of State, has indicated that the government is now to consider the report. I look forward to receiving the government’s response to the report. I note that the Special Minister of State’s press release informed the public that the Special Minister of State was looking forward to progressing the issue through government, to developing legislation later this year and to introducing legislation in this term of the parliament. It is a long overdue measure, and I look forward to the legislation being introduced. (Time expired)

Debate (on motion by Ms King) adjourned.