Page 2207 - Week 08 - Thursday, 10 September 1992
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MR MOORE: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker - and well ruled indeed. The reason for that point of order is that Mr Berry is worried that somebody might identify something in his Government, and that is exactly the point we are debating. Even he demonstrates the point in jumping to his feet at this particular time because he is very worried that somebody might talk about open government. That is, of course, within the context of the matter of public importance. A normal person - and you, Mr Deputy Speaker - - -
Mr Berry: Yes, that is right; I am glad that you separated them.
MR MOORE: Mr Berry interjects that he is glad that I separated them. Therefore, I withdraw any inference that could possibly be contained in what I said, Mr Deputy Speaker. We are talking about open government. Some people were fortunate enough to hear some of the comments made by Ted Mack this morning on the Matthew Abraham show. He was not speaking just from imagination. Ted Mack, as mayor of North Sydney, ran an extremely open council at the time when his council had the greatest number of property developments of any - - -
Mr Connolly: I raise a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Could you explain to me why the North Sydney Council is relevant to this debate, whereas Mr Berry's description of the Alliance Government was held to be irrelevant to this debate?
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Connolly, as I said earlier, there have been some references to other matters in this debate. I am giving Mr Moore the same amount of latitude in terms of time as I gave to Mr Berry and Mrs Carnell.
MR MOORE: Perhaps I should explain that open government is the exact opposite to what has been described in the matter of public importance. As such, the two work as a corollary of one another. Therefore, it is quite appropriate to talk about what is possible as opposed to what actually happens.
In North Sydney - and I shall dwell on it only briefly - when matters that would in almost every other place be considered commercial-in-confidence were brought to the council, they were simply put on the public record and anything on the public record was available for anybody to see. In fact, there was no such thing as commercial-in-confidence. Of course, that is often considered the extreme in terms of an open government. Generally it is said, "Yes, we can have open government, but we must still retain commercial-in-confidence". That is something that has been questioned. The experience has been very positive in North Sydney, and some of the practices there could be applied to the ACT. The difficulty that is faced here is the fact that, the more a government closes down its shutters, the more it will need to close its shutters and the more paranoid it will become. There are certainly some indications that that is happening in some sections of this Government.
Mr Connolly took a point of order a short while ago. It was quite right that Mrs Carnell should have identified Mr Connolly as being very open in his dealings. That is true. Mr Wood also has adopted a very open policy, for example, for members visiting education establishments - schools and so forth. The other day I was fortunate to go out to what used to be called the behavioural unit - we now have a nice new term that is much better - at Dairy Flat. What is the term we use now, Mr Wood?
Mr Lamont: The Dairy Flat establishment.
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