Page 2037 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 8 September 1992
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.44), by leave: Madam Speaker, Mr Berry has indicated the way that this matter arose from a request from the Chief Executive of Health to have the matter of documents investigated. The Crimes (Offences against the Government) Act 1989, which was amended by this Assembly last year but which seemed to have the general support of members of the Assembly, does create quite serious offences of theft of government property. Once the police were asked to look at the matter, the process of the investigation - and I want to stress this - was entirely outside the conduct of this Government. We do not expect to give police instructions as to how to conduct investigations. Indeed, any government that did that would be deserving of extreme censure.
The first I was aware of the matter of the warrants being issued at the Canberra Times was after the event had occurred, and I think that is quite proper. I would be most concerned if the police were coming to Ministers to seek advice or to let them know in advance whom they were going to be serving warrants on. That is purely a police operational decision. I would also be concerned if the police drew some sort of distinction, when investigating a possible criminal offence, between the media and others.
Mr Humphries seeks to make, I suspect, some quick favourable headlines by posing this afternoon as the saviour of the free press and the saviour of freedom of expression. I would find it extraordinary if Mr Humphries would support a proposition that when a criminal incident is being investigated the police ought to have one rule for the rest of society and one rule for somebody who is associated with the media or a media outlet.
Mr Humphries: It is not the same.
MR CONNOLLY: That is the thrust of what you are saying. The police, as I am advised, in investigating a potential criminal offence made the operational decision to serve a search warrant. Once that decision had been made, they drew no distinction because the target, as it were, was a media outlet.
I understand that the process that Mr Humphries likes to categorise as a raid, to try again to grab a headline, took place in a most civilised manner. The Canberra Times would, of course, have had the opportunity to seek an injunction to prevent the warrant from being executed. They are well advised of their right to do that. Media outlets sometimes do that. That certainly did not occur. So, as I say, the process took place in a civilised manner, and the categorisation of it as a raid is sensationalism.
The important point that must be made is that this Government did not give any directions to the police as to how to conduct their investigations; nor should they, and nor, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, should this Government be expected, once a matter is being investigated by the police, to go in and give the police some sort of operational instruction that would favour the media above other members of the community. That is what Mr Humphries seems to be suggesting and that would be quite wrong.
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