‘Publish the things’, says Skelton on Register of Interests

Opposition Leader Ronnie Skelton has called on his fellow lawmakers to do the honourable thing in relation to publicising their assets and interests in the Register of Interests (ROI).

Lawmakers were reprimanded during the Commission of Inquiry (COI) for failing over the years to declare their interests as required by the law.

Effectively, the Register of Interests is a record kept of the financial interests of legislators. Its purpose is to give them the mechanism to publicly declare any private interests which may conflict or may be perceived to conflict with their public duties.

Skelton argued that people in the territory only seem to dwell on negative happenings, which is reflected in the comments on online news stories. He then pointed to the COI recommendations as one of the things that reflected poorly on lawmakers.

“So the COI, the COI implementation, the things that are needed to be done, need to be done,” Skelton said. “…The Register of Interests that they had to come here to tell us we must do.”

“Come on, we know we had to do it. We’re in a public space. We’re dealing with public funds. Let us not run away. Let’s publish the things,,” the Opposition Leader stated.

The COI report recommended greater transparency in the publication of lawmakers’ interests and suggested that other public officials and public servants should be included in revised legislation for the register.

But lawmakers and public servants pushed back strongly against this recommendation which would have also meant a publicly accessible version of HOA members’ declaration of interests.

That pushback resulted in a watered-down version of the recommended legislation being passed in the House of Assembly last year.

Governor John Rankin said he expects lawmakers to revisit the legislation before the end of the year.