Page 2212 - Week 08 - Thursday, 10 September 1992
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.05): Mr Deputy Speaker, in addressing this matter of public importance, I will make extensive reference to the practice of the Alliance Government. Of course, you will recognise the relevance of those references, because the MPI refers to abnormal tendencies to secrecy, and the dictionary defines "abnormal" as "not conforming to rule; deviating from the type or standard". So it is clearly necessary for me to refer extensively to previous governments in order to debate the issue of what is or is not abnormal.
Mr Deputy Speaker, the pathetic attempts of the Opposition to beat this issue up derive from the obvious fact that the Opposition have no other criticism to offer of this Government. This Government is proceeding on the big issues. The Chief Minister referred only this afternoon to our progress on employment issues. Next week this Opposition will be shown to be hollow when this Government brings down its budget dealing with the difficult issues confronting the Canberra community.
I turn to the issue of openness of government and access to government information. When I was in opposition in this chamber, this place must have been a different one and the then Government must have been a different one from the one that I observed. Access to information held by that Government when I was an opposition member conformed, to my recollection, to the standard that I was familiar with as a departmental officer in a Commonwealth department which quite often had access to sensitive information - that is, opposition members did not have direct access to government officials.
Mr Westende referred at question time to the principles of ministerial responsibility. Mr Deputy Speaker, the principle of ministerial responsibility is, of course, that the bureaucracy puts into effect government policy and is the area where the citizen comes into contact with governments. Citizens rarely come into contact with Ministers. The bureaucracy is answerable to Ministers, who are answerable to the elected representatives, who are answerable to the people. That is the principle of ministerial responsibility. I am not aware of any parliament anywhere in Australia - although Mr Moore would hark back fondly to the North Sydney Council - where the bureaucracy, the government, is accountable to individual members of parliament, where individual members of parliament feel that they have an open channel to the bureaucracy to give directions that information be prepared for them.
Mr Humphries: You are going to extremes.
MR CONNOLLY: I am not. It gives me concern, and I would have thought it would have given Mr Humphries concern, that the minute from the Government Solicitor's Office has been leaked to the Opposition. It gives me concern because I, like Mr Humphries, have worked in the past as a government legal officer. I worked, as I am sure Mr Humphries did, for a period under a Federal Liberal government, in the Department of Foreign Affairs; and Mr Humphries worked for many years under a Federal Labor government. I am sure that Mr Humphries would never have leaked to outside persons information that he came into contact with as part of his duties. Nor would I.
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