Aust. Ombudsman favours complaints ‘over the counter’

Press, 8 March 1978, Page 2

Aust. Ombudsman favours complaints ‘over the counter’

Australia has been follow-1 ing New Zealand’s lead in; the setting up of ombudsmen, according to Professor J. E. Richardson, the recently appointed Commonwealth Ombudsman in Australia, vho is in New Zealand for a week to study the office. At present, Professor Richardson carries out his duties as Commonwealth Ombudsman from Canberra, but within a month he intends to name the first two of several regional ombudsmen who are to be appointed. Professor Richardson began a seven-year term as Ombudsman last July. “I regard this sort of decentralisation as very important,” Professor Richardson said in Christchurch yesterday. “I think it is essential to dispel a feeling of centralised bureaucracy. I want the situation to evolve where people can come into an ombudsman’s office and discuss their complaint over the counter."

The first two regional offices will be in Melbourne and Sydney. Others will be set up later. Professor Richardson said he was visiting the regional ombudsman’s offices in Christchurch and Auckland, as well as the central office in Wellington, to see if there was anything he could learn.

“New Zealand was the first English speaking country to establish such an office, and so it has 15 or 16 years experience behind it, whereas a relative newcomer to the concept, such as Australia, has still got a lot to learn,” he said. So far,Professor Richard-

son said, he had not had one of his recommendations to Government departments rejected. But he had been very careful about the cases he had presented... \ “You cannot he's straightout crusader. You have to be a diplomat as well in getting your point across,? he. said. “You put the complainant’s case in the best way you can, but you cannot bulldoze your way.” Professor Richardson said that the Prime Minister of Australia (Mr Fraser) was most concerned that his Government should adapt to suit the public rather than the bureaucracy, and so the office of ombudsman was influential, though it carried no executive power. “Public servants are not personally officious. It is just that, until recently, they have been able to make decisions without giving any reasons or any explanation for them,” he said. “They have been able to keep the public in the dark.” “It is hardly surprising. Government departments have been going for about 70 years, and they have built up their own methods of functioning. They used to

be answerable only to members of Parliament, and the advent of the Ombudsman has come as a bit of a shock to them.”

The ombudsman’s role, in this sense, was to make the Government departments, and the people in them, more sensitive to public requirements. “Rules, made hard and fast by legislation, have been administered without discretion. They need to be rounded at the edges,” Pro-

fessor Richardson said. “It is not that there are too, many rules, necessarily, 'W that they are bad-, nites, Wt that there is now a new concept of justice. The old aklgge of ‘Fair for -one, fair for all’ does not work in practice any longer.” ’ If, however, he felt that a law was not a-good law, or that the rules were too oppressive, he could make recommendations to have them changed, he said. Restrictions on personal liberty could in all likelihood be imposed if acts of terrorism, such as the Hilton Hotel bomb incident, became more widespread. But there was little chance of this becoming a problem in Australia, he said. “Terrorism militates against the system of open government. Obviously people’s liberties will be affected,” Professor Richardson said. “Some countries have already had to go further than they have wanted, for this very reason; but it does not look as if it will be a major problem in Australia, notwithstanding the Hilton incident,” he said.