Open and Honest Government

The Greens (WA) stand for open and honest government, in which governments listen to all citizens and make evidence-based decisions in the public interest.  

Goals

The Greens (WA) want:

• to promote greater openness so that government deliberations, decisions and actions are transparent to the community which can hold government accountable
• to remove the ability of donors and lobbyists to exert disproportionate influence over government decision-making 

Initiatives

The Greens (WA) will initiate and support legislation and actions that:

Campaign Finances

• provide public funding to enable information-based election campaigns
• impose caps on election-related expenditure by political parties, candidates and third parties
• require all political parties to file a pre-election report disclosing donations received since its last annual report was filed

 Lobbyists

• replace the current system for overseeing the activities of lobbyists with a more rigorous system enacted through legislation that regulates paid lobbyists and establishes a lobbyists register, a code of conduct and provision for disciplinary hearings against lobbyists before the State Administrative Tribunal (comparable to disciplinary proceedings that can be brought against legal or health practitioners)
• ensure that the regulation of paid lobbyists does not impact adversely on the not-for-profit sector
• establish a 2-year ‘cooling off’ period for Ministers and ministerial staff between when they leave office and when they can take up work as a lobbyist

Access to Information

• strengthen protection of whistleblowers, and review provisions in the Criminal Code which make it an offence for a public servant to release official information
• introduce ‘shield laws’ to ensure that, save in exceptional cases, a journalist cannot be required to reveal his or her source
• strengthen freedom of information laws
• retain the Office of the Information Commissioner with existing or enhanced powers
• ensure that access to information is not restricted by ability to pay or by unnecessary delay
• ensure public access, at a reasonable cost, to court proceedings and reports
• ensure that the formal decisions of cabinet and its sub-committees to be made publicly available within a reasonable time

Elections

• establish fixed Parliamentary terms to improve certainty and prevent elections being called simply to suit the political interests of the government of the day (as has just occurred)
• ensure that the Parliamentary terms of the Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council are concurrent, so that both chambers change at the same time
• introduce preferential above-the-line voting for the Legislative Council, to ensure voters are in control of the preference flow of their votes

Government Advertising

• establish independent scrutiny of proposed government advertising by the Auditor-General to ensure that such advertising is not used for party-political purposes

Role of the Auditor General

• ensure that candidates appointed as Auditor General have cross-party support, and that assessments of Auditor General’s budgetary requirements are independent of the government of the day
• ensure that the Auditor General is answerable to Parliament and overseen by a Parliamentary Committee with a non-government majority

Parliamentary Committee System

• ensure that the Legislative Council’s committee system is adequately funding, in recognition of the important role of the Council as the House of Review

A Second Commission on Government

• initiate a second Commission on Government to audit the implementation of recommendations made by its predecessor and consider, in consultation with the community, whether new measures are required to better promote open and honest government in Western Australia.