Introduction
This report relates to the Integrity Commission’s function to monitor the operation of the Parliamentary disclosure of interests register, pursuant to s 30(a) of the Integrity Commission Act 2009 (‘Integrity Commission Act’). The Parliamentary disclosure of interests register is in fact two registers (collectively, ‘the Register’), with one each kept by the Clerk of each House of Parliament in accordance with the Parliamentary (Disclosure of Interests) Act 1996 (‘Disclosure Act’). The review period for this report is from 1 July 2015 to 30 June 2016.
Since 2010, the Commission has reported annually on its monitoring of the Register; however, this is the first time that such a report has been tabled in Parliament. The public release of this report follows the Commission’s review of key issues relating to the Register in its 2014–15 report (provided to the Joint Standing Committee on Integrity), and a general inclination to make more information relating to the Commission’s role publicly accessible. This ensures that the Commission is meeting its objectives under the Integrity Commission Act, and that the disclosures of parliamentarians are sufficient to safeguard public confidence in transparent and accountable government.
The Commission is cognisant of the State Government’s current review of the Disclosure Act. The Commission has provided the Government with its views on key issues relating to that Act and the Commission’s role under the Integrity Commission Act. The Commission provided a submission on the draft Parliamentary (Disclosure of Interests) Amendment Bill 2017 (‘the Amendment Bill’), distributed by the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPaC) in January of this year (refer Appendix 1) and has previously provided a draft disclosure form to address many of the issues identified in this report.
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