The need for a public ethics commission

Henry Melville

Tasmanian Times readers……are you going to be a mob of sheep roused together by the sheep dogs, sent through the gates into the yards and onto the back of trucks? Do you know where you are going and where you’ll finish up?
Break out Tasmanians … these mobsters cannot ‘herd’ Tasmanian devils!

Forget the legalistic paraphernalia that confuse the basics of ethics and honesty, what are your personal experiences of how debauched Tasmania’s public discussions have become.

Tell your stories on Tasmania Times and write a personal submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry:

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten.

Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything
• Play fair
• Don’t hit people
• Put things back where you found them
• Clean up your own mess
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours
• Say you re sorry when you hurt somebody
• Wash your hands before you eat
• Flush
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you
• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some
• Take a nap every afternoon
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that
• Goldfish and hampsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.

The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.

Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm.

Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about three o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

From Robert Fulghum – Excerpt from Adult Learning Australia 1: 23

CALL FOR COMMUNITY FORUMS IN THE LEAD UP TO CALL FOR PUBLIC SUBMISSION TO THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY INTO THE NEED FOR A PUBLIC ETHICS COMMISSION IN TASMANIA

After all that’s happened in Tasmania, now what’s the hurry Premier?

At a community meeting held on Sunday 22 June to broadly discuss governance, transparency & accountability in government and the public service, participants raised concerns over the lack of public information material to support the Joint Parliamentary Inquiry advertised on 21 June. The call for public submissions on its three terms of reference closes on 18 July.

The Premier is to be congratulated for this first step of setting up this important inquiry, however, in the absence of extensive community promotion and background information to support the terms of reference, this meeting of Tasmanian citizens expressed their doubts about the level of awareness that would be initiated across Tasmania.

Tasmanian Government through the Parliament needs to allocate more time and resources to allow for informed community involvement in this important Parliamentary Inquiry.

In the aftermath of disastrously embarrassing ‘Shreddergate’ incident, the resignation of the deputy premier and the premier and the cascade of revelations over the government’s handling of the Gunns Pulp Mill approvals process, there is deep concern that this one-off Parliamentary Inquiry is being kept as a minimalist activity, when in reality it is the basis for constructive reform to several layers of systemically dysfunctional public governance and probity in this state.

That the most important issue supporting the good government in Tasmania is relegated to a single advertisement in the Public Notices in the three Tasmanian newspaper last Saturday followed by a three week period calling for submissions and with no accompanying background information is totally unacceptable. It has the potential to diminish the inquiry to yet another appeasement strategy in which those individuals and organisations with a thorough knowledge of the current governance and probity issues will be at a decided advantage both strategically and intellectually.

Some may say – it was ever thus!

The public statutes and policies underpinning the scope of this Parliamentary Inquiry are very substantial indeed. They would necessarily cover the adequacy and effectiveness of current laws covering, Freedom of Information, Public Interest Disclosure, the powers of the Director of Public Prosecution, the Attorney-General, the Ombudsman, the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, the Auditor-General, the Police Commissioner and the ethical conduct expected of our elected parliamentarians and state public servant.

The Terms of Reference for the inquiry are broad, and public participation is essential.

With a new premier wishing to demonstrate a genuine commitment to an open & ethical government and bureaucracy in Tasmania, why the speed to call for submissions without any background information?

After all that’s happened in Tasmania, now what’s the hurry Premier?