Page 2214 - Week 08 - Thursday, 10 September 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR CONNOLLY: According to the Canberra Times. Let me refer to the Canberra Times. Mr Berry referred to a report of 24 April 1991. Mr Humphries, as Minister, said:
That leak has done a lot of damage to some people's reputations, and to the Government's position, and I think it needs to be tracked down if that is at all possible. If someone is found to have been leaking information then clearly their head will have to roll ...
Ms Follett: Who said that?
MR CONNOLLY: Minister Humphries. Today he has been ranting and raving about tin-pot dictatorships and ranting and raving about open governments. Yet he said that people's heads would roll if they were found to have leaked against his Government. That was his approach.
We are told that the Alliance had a mature, open, relaxed approach to government. We all recall the Capital Television pictures of the then Chief Minister running away from Capital Television's cameras with a particular Capital Television journalist in hot pursuit. We all recall the bunkers. Opposition members should note this. When the Liberal Party was in government, it was the pattern for members coming to work to have to go through a barrage of television cameras and journalists down at the car park because that Government bunkered itself to the point that it would not talk to the media. The only time the media could get near Ministers was when they were going into the car park. To speed up their progress, Ministers invested in the magic button so that they did not have to stop. Mr Deputy Speaker, you do not see that sort of doorstopping these days, because this Government is open. When Mr Kaine was the Chief Minister, that was the closest the media could get to him.
Let us look again at the Liberals' sensitive approach to criticism. We are being attacked as being oversensitive to public criticism. I refer to the Canberra Times of 1 November 1990, and an article by Mr Uhlmann under the headline "Canberra media's fairness needs urgent review; says Collaery". Mr Collaery, the then Attorney-General, proposed a sort of Canberra censorship regime whereby - - -
Mr Humphries: You are not quoting Bernard Collaery as an authority for anything, are you?
MR CONNOLLY: He was your Deputy Chief Minister and Attorney-General. Mr Westende referred to the principles of ministerial responsibility. I refer to the principles of Cabinet solidarity. Your Attorney-General was ranting and raving in November of 1990, saying that urgent attention needed to be given to legislative measures - - -
Mr De Domenico: And he ended up being fired, by the way.
MR CONNOLLY: That was some six months later. He said that we needed to have legislative measures to control the Canberra Times. He said that it needed urgent attention. According to him, some people were suffering unfairly in articles that were not defamatory, so we needed to control the Canberra Times;
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .