Canberrans would be handed the power to directly elect their chief minister under a bold proposal to reimagine how the capital is governed and deepen the political talent pool put forward by the Liberals' top Senate candidate.
Nick Tyrrell also wants the ACT to examine a system that would allow the chief minister to select a cabinet from outside the Legislative Assembly, putting more experts in the mix to oversee crucial areas like health and education.
The Liberal candidate said no government could be strong when it was only able to draw on the dozen or fewer members who won a seat, describing the situation as drawing from a talent puddle.
"I built a business and hired people smarter than me to run the parts I could not. Government should do the same, instead of hoping a first-term MLA with no senior management experience masters a portfolio overnight," Mr Tyrrell said.
Former Liberal chief minister and ACT senator Gary Humphries said the ACT should seriously examine the "pretty radical" suggestion.
"As a person who worked in the democratic process as a young man and is now an older man, it just fills me with despair that our system has sort of fallen into disrepute and people are losing faith in it. It's just a shocking thing," Mr Humphries told The Canberra Times.
"But we have to acknowledge that the people chiefly responsible for repair, democratic repair, are politicians themselves. They've got to be stepping up and saying, OK, we hear you, we see the system isn't working, what can we do to make this better, to make it more responsive, to give people outcomes that they feel they deserve from the process of good government."
Mr Tyrrell said the Federal Parliament needed to review the ACT's system of self-government and give Canberrans the power to decide what kind of governing system they wanted.
"Confident cities choose their form of government on purpose. We are the only city-state in Australia, and there's no shame in reviewing how our structure is working, or not, with an open mind to alternative models," he said.
Support for a review of self-government has been growing since the federal Labor member for Bean, David Smith, in August called for the system to be examined.
In Mr Tyrrell's proposed model, ACT voters would directly elect the chief minister, who would appoint "professional secretaries or commissioners" to run the government's portfolios. Ministers would be accountable to the Assembly, which could have the power to vote to remove them.
Mr Tyrrell pointed to the Brisbane City Council, where the lord mayor is elected, and Scandinavian governments where ministers do not sit in parliament as examples of alternatives to the Westminster-derived Assembly that has governed the ACT since 1989.
Adding seats to a broken system in the ACT would not fix it, he said.
"While we're at it, we could slim the parliament to 15 members with one job: make good laws and hold that leader to account. Draw them as three electorates of five, matching our federal seats of Bean, Canberra and Fenner, so your local and federal representatives cover the same ground and you always know who answers for what," he said.
Mr Humphries said the talent pool in politics had narrowed and Canberra was making a mistake in not drawing from the broader set of experiences and expertise sitting outside the Assembly to inform government decision-making.
"To get to be a minister, you've got to be generally a kind of a party heavy, a hack, a true believer, and your chief qualification is usually that you've, you know, always been loyal to the party of your choice," he said of the current system.
"The chances that you're a health administrator or an experienced educator or, you know, someone knowledgeable in public transport or anything like that is very small, and yet these people exist in our community and would make ideal directors, commissioners, you know, quasi ministers, and create a much, much better set of minds around the table making the relevant decisions for our community."
Mr Humphries, who sat in the Legislative Assembly from its inception in 1989 until the end of 2002 and is the most recent Liberal to serve as chief minister, said he supported a review of the self-government system and suggested a multi-member board of inquiry with Commonwealth representation.
"I think that's eminently sensible and should happen and I think this model is something that needs to be looked at," he said of Mr Tyrrell's proposed system.
"It's pretty radical and it may be too radical for, you know, people in the city who've been worshipping at the altar of Westminster systems for decades. It might go too far, but I think it's a model that needs to be on the table and I think people will think about radical alternatives if they're explained properly and they can be justified."
A Legislative Assembly standing committee is examining electoral representation in the ACT in a self-initiated inquiry that will look at the size of the Assembly, the number of ministers needed for an effective government, and the possibility of an upper house and the establishment of local councils.
Submissions to the inquiry close on October 30.
