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The Forum > Article Comments > The letter of the law > Comments

The letter of the law : Comments

By David Russell, published 31/5/2012

Parliamentarians who can't be trusted to act ethically will only find loopholes in codes of conduct.

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< Parliamentarians who can't be trusted to act ethically will only find loopholes in codes of conduct. >

Can’t agree with that.

Hey, it is truly staggering that parliamentarians don’t have a code of conduct. All public servants do. How can they not have one??

A good code of conduct wouldn’t have loopholes. Codes of conduct for the public service have been refined over many years. It would surely not take too much effort to adapt this to suit parliamentarians.

The critical problem with public service codes of conduct is that (in my situation and I presume just about across the board), they are not worth the paper they are written on! Not because they aren’t comprehensive and well written, but because the management regime is just disgraceful.

Numerous times in my 23 years in the Queensland public service, I witnessed senior managers just completely ignore the code and behave in a manner totally irrespective of it, with impunity!

No one seemed to be willing to uphold it!

However in parliament it would surely be totally different, where we have two parties only too willing to jump on any member of the other party who steps out of line, and who would therefore uphold the highest standard amongst their own members.

< What is needed is for our parliaments to demand a clear and very high standard of moral and ethical behaviour… >

Yes, but I disagree David that this is somehow at odds with a good code of conduct. It surely isn’t. A code of conduct could surely only help in this regard.
Posted by Ludwig, Thursday, 31 May 2012 10:06:40 AM
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With all due respect to Mr Russell, the draft Code of Conduct for federal MPs' (and Senators) proposed in November last year is not 90 pages long, nor is it in any way 'complex'.

The Draft Code takes up some 3 pages of a 78-page Discussion Paper, which canvasses a wide range of approaches and submissions from (mostly) other Parliaments in the Commonwealth. See here: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=pmi/index.htm

The Draft Code itself is based on an earlier draft prepared by a Parliamentary Committee in 1995, which appears to have been strongly influenced by the Public Sector Ethics Act 1994(Qld) which in turn is based on the draft Bill produced by EARC in 1991. The principles-based approach to codification adopted by these documents was also adopted in the 'Standards of Ministerial Ethics' brought in by the Rudd Government on coming into office in 2007. The Standards may be found here: http://www.dpmc.gov.au/guidelines/docs/ministerial_ethics.pdf

The general point to make about compliance with Ethics and integrity codes is that the important issue is not not how close you can get to 'the line' without offending, but how far away from it you can be.
Posted by Ethicos, Thursday, 31 May 2012 11:22:28 AM
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Thomson is not charged with using

$250,00 or $500,000 of any public money for anything, he is not accused of using that much money at all. That is a figure concocted entirely by the media and the AEC proved it to be patently false already.In fact the FWA report was not an investigation it was utter nonsense where Thomson is blamed for things that happened long after he left and where the reasoning behind the absurd claims amount to ""there were not rules, he broke them".

As for Peter Slipper, it is not possible to rort cab charge vouchers because the passenger never gets the money anyway and Ashby has withdrawn that bit.

As for the other crap, it was a set up by Chris Pyne, Eric Abetz and Mal Brough.

All this babble about codes of ethics, what about codes of ethics for bloviators who don't know any facts of anything but pretend they do.
Posted by Marilyn Shepherd, Thursday, 31 May 2012 5:21:16 PM
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private philosophy works it way into public policy. Just look at the recently gaoled State Government Pollies. Godless politicians bereft of personal morals have hijacked Australia. Unfortunately the public have been to blaise to be concerned about it. These Politicians are usually the ones championed by the press (especially National Broadcasters) as they feel it validates their own lifestyles. Codes of conduct just make a mockery of things encouraging political correctness such as we see with the AFL. They allow a man charged with chopping someone up with a machette to play football simply because he is not white anglo saxon. They do however have a code of conduct (yeah!). You would need to write the code from the satanic bible in order for some of our current pollie to be able to conform. Thankfully their are a few with integrity still. They are hard to find but just look to the ones that are mocked by the ABC and you can be pretty sure they are ok.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 31 May 2012 5:37:01 PM
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Hells bells Marilyn, what aaare your writing??

It is so close to being sensible that for the first time ever I can actually almost agree with you!! !! !!

You do surprise me enormously. You’re not just entirely narrowly focussed on children in detention afterall.

Good!

Yes I think that we need to be very careful about the media and the opposing political party blowing things right out of all proportion as it concerns Thomson and Slipper, or any issues of this sort.

One thing that a code of conduct needs to cover is the actions of those who accuse others of wrong-doing. It should be an immediate violation of the code for someone to assert allegations against another person which are later shown to be false and spurious and hence vexacious.
Posted by Ludwig, Thursday, 31 May 2012 6:59:28 PM
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Heaven's Ludwig, we agree.

but you still want to jail children for no reason and that is certainly not ethical.

Ethics aren't a hand bag to be picked up and put down at will.
Posted by Marilyn Shepherd, Friday, 1 June 2012 5:13:45 AM
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Heavens Marilyn, I said on the other thread:

<< For children, sure in some if not all instances, get them out of detention. >>

So what’s with your scurrilous misrepresentation of my views here??

You're not going to like this, but hey I AGREE with you (more or less) regarding kids in detention!

.

Runner, I don’t understand why you would be against a polly’s code of conduct.

Isn’t a code of conduct analogous to the ten commandments or the bible overall in the way that it guides and governs the moral, ethical and practical way that Christians live and reinforces integrity where there might be a tendency to wander off-course?
Posted by Ludwig, Friday, 1 June 2012 8:31:49 AM
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Ludwig

'Isn’t a code of conduct analogous to the ten commandments or the bible overall in the way that it guides and governs the moral, ethical and practical way that Christians live and reinforces integrity where there might be a tendency to wander off-course?'

The thing that Christians are often labelled with is hypocrisy. Sometimes the accusers are right and other times they are displaying their Christophobic nature.

The ten commandments along with the rest of the Jewish laws showed that no man except Jesus was able to keep God's holy law. Even a man lusting after a woman not his wife is considered an adulterer. That makes 99 per cent of men adulterers at heart. In other words the laws did not change a person's heart condition. Only God can do that.

The ten commandmennts are second to none as far as an ethical base for a nation but don't change individual hearts or behaviour.

A code of conduct would not of stopped Ms Gillard from stabbing a PM in the back or lying to the electorate. A code of conduct would not stop Mr Abbott from pretending he beleives in the gw fantasy even kn ow he does not. Honesty and integrity come through character and not codes of conducts.

Politicians and much of society are good at appearing to conform to rules and regulations when often the hearts are rotton. A code of conduct would not prevent the farce in Parliament now with the Thomson affair. Bottom line is a code of conduct would only benefit the additional people employed to come up with the creed. We already have numerous Government agencies that are suppose to deal with racism, sexism, EEO, carbon police, etc etc etc

The only thing that might improve the current state of affairs with a Government with little to no morals is an election.
Posted by runner, Friday, 1 June 2012 10:06:20 AM
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Gosh runner, do you train with Tony?
Posted by Marilyn Shepherd, Friday, 1 June 2012 9:23:11 PM
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Runner, you wrote:

<< The ten commandments along with the rest of the Jewish laws showed that no man except Jesus was able to keep God's holy law >>

Really?? No man was able to uphold the holy law? That’s incredible! Well in that case surely the holy law was fundamentally flawed.

<< Even a man lusting after a woman not his wife is considered an adulterer. That makes 99 per cent of men adulterers at heart. >>

Yes exactly. It is just human nature for men to find women other than their partner attractive and to have ‘evil’ lustful thoughts.

Seems like the holy law is definitely at fault here if it prevents such a thing.

<< A code of conduct would not of stopped Ms Gillard from stabbing a PM in the back or lying to the electorate >>

Gillard didn’t stab Rudd in the back. Rudd performed so dismally as PM that his colleagues saw the need to replace him. Gillard as deputy PM was the obvious choice. But yes, a code of conduct would not have prevented this… and rightly so! Rudd needed to go!

<< Honesty and integrity come through character and not codes of conducts. >>

But how do you know who has real honesty and integrity before we elect them? We don’t. So we need a good code of conduct to keep the majority of people elected to parliament with little or selective honesty and integrity in line.

<< The only thing that might improve the current state of affairs with a Government with little to no morals is an election >>

No it wouldn’t, because the opposition is just as bad. The only thing that will improve the current dismal state of affairs is a good code of conduct…and a rigorous upholding thereof!
Posted by Ludwig, Friday, 1 June 2012 9:51:55 PM
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