Santo Santoro (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

To make it perfectly clear, we are talking about advice that the council may wish to provide to the minister. The advice that I have received is that advice needs to be provided directly to the minister on instructions of the council and that advice provided to the minister is tabled at the subsequent meeting of the council. So the council would be very much aware of what advice was given to the minister at its next meeting and would be able to take up any issues, particularly issues of concern, about how the advice was tendered, let alone the content of the advice. We are talking about how the council provides advice to the minister and what guidelines and safeguards are put in place that will ensure that the CEO provides advice that faithfully represents the views of the council.

The adhocery that you mentioned in terms of people being able to talk to the minister and to anyone else, including each other, is a fact of human life and interaction. People will provide personal views to each other, ministers or whoever else all the time. What we are debating is how the council advises the minister. The safeguards are there, including reporting back formally, as I have been advised, at the subsequent meeting of a council as to what advice has been provided to a minister. So the government does not accept that by not supporting this amendment we will be introducing adhocery into the process of reporting back to the minister.