Locke Keith: Inquiries Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Locke Keith: Inquiries Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 July 2009. Volume:656;Page:5210. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be supporting the Inquiries Bill; it is important that we update the procedures. The royal commission legislation is about 100 years old and it is good that we are modernising it. The Greens are a little bit concerned that the legislation might not sufficiently guide the public inquiries that are set up under this new legislation. Just going through the bill briefly clause 3 stating the purpose is very general regarding what the public inquiry can be about. It basically just says that the bill provides for “the establishment of both public and government inquiries to inquire into matters of public importance;” which is obviously very broad ranging.There can be two quite different types of inquiry that inform this legislation and perhaps the select committee will go into this in a bit of detail. One is an inquiry into a more specific incident where there are clear parties to the incident such as the inquiry into the sinking of the  
Mikhail Lermontov 
 a few years back where we were trying to get at the essence of what exactly happened and who might be responsible. Then there are other inquiries on matters of broad public interest. The 1976 royal commission of inquiry into nuclear power was a case in point and about 5 years ago there was a royal commission of inquiry into genetic engineering. Those are quite different because they are matters of very broad public interest. 
Let us look at the powers of a public inquiry commission under this bill. It has very broad powers to decide whether to conduct interviews; whether to call witnesses and if so whom to call; whether to receive oral or written evidence; and whether to allow restricted cross-examination of witnesses and presumably to decide who does that cross-examination—whether it is the commission or whether other people are allowed to do it. So it has very broad powers and there should be a bit more guidance in the bill in terms of whom the commission might hear from and whom it might allow to do this cross-examination. Clause 18 of the bill provides for the concept of core participants who are defined as those who have “played or may have played a direct and significant role in relation to the matters to which the inquiry relates:”. Clause 18(2)(b) states that consideration must be given to whether that person “has a significant interest in a substantial aspect of the matters to which the inquiry relates:”. I suppose the first one about a person having played a direct or significant role relates more to inquiries that are on a specific thing like as I said before the sinking of the  
Mikhail Lermontov 
. Paragraph (b) might relate to a more general inquiry like the one on genetic engineering—that is parties that have “a significant interest in a substantial aspect of the matters to which the inquiry relates:”. 
Possibly that definition needs to be specified a bit more because it may be that if it is a bit too loose certain people who have a genuine interest in a topic like genetic engineering or nuclear power to use those two previous examples might not be fully recognised in terms of their role. In fact there was a lot of contention on the royal commission on genetic engineering about who had standing—I think the term used at the inquiry was “standing”; they could be there permanently. Some of those who were recognised as having standing had certain rights of cross-examination. There was quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing on who had that standing. So possibly the select committee could give some more specific guidance in respect of these public inquiries so that no one gets left out. Because a position taken by an interested party may not really be an establishment one for some on the commission it could be a case of: “Oh well you’re just fringe protesters.” or whatever. But often these people represent a significant amount of public opinion and should be given full rights not only to give written and oral submissions and to be subject to cross-examination themselves but it is often very useful for them to be participants in the cross-examination of others—perhaps others with different views. With those few comments I say that the Greens will be supporting this legislation and we look forward to the select committee consideration.