Page 3054 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 17 November 1992
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represented was a significant escalation in the closed shop mentality employed by this Government. It was a bringing down of the shutters. It was a way of saying, "You are not getting the information because", as Mr Berry put it before, "you are Liberals". That is what it was all about.
Mr Connolly has made much from across the chamber about the fact that this was a tiny part of the Government Service which did not represent typically what was going on in the rest of the Government Service. On that basis, you could assume that perhaps some officer erred when he wrote that minute. That might be the case, except for the fact that Ms Follett defended that minute and characterised it as an accurate expression of the policy of her Government. I quote from the Hansard of 10 September this year, when she referred to that Law Office minute we just referred to:
To the extent that members feel that that is contrary to answers that I have previously given, all I can say is that I do not believe that it is.
In other words, she was saying that this minute reflects government policy. She had the chance there to repudiate it, but she did not. Mr Connolly has fallen silent; but I would like to hear him explain how that is reconciled.
Mr Kaine: He has fallen silent because he is speechless.
MR HUMPHRIES: Obviously so. We cannot operate effectively as representatives of our community if we do not have access to those kinds of decision makers and decision making. We must have it. We are, without it, merely an expensive pimple on the face of the body politic of the ACT. When I say that, I am referring to all members of this Assembly who are not members of the Government. That is unacceptable.
Let me make it clear that I am not attacking the performance of all Ministers to the same extent. Clearly, there are Ministers in this Government who pursue a policy that is far more open, far more accessible, than that of other Ministers. But the fact that there are such Ministers indicates what a vast gulf there is between the practices of some Ministers and those of others. Rather than heap praise, which is not my practice, I will point out the more damaging, the more derelict, practices of some of those opposite.
Mr Berry: I bet I can guess who.
MR HUMPHRIES: Yes, I am sure you can, Mr Berry. Poor Mrs Carnell has been told, in no uncertain terms, that she is not going to get so much as the opening hours of a public health centre from anyone in the ACT public health system. We know what the policy is, Mr Berry. Mrs Carnell is persona non grata. Nothing goes to Mrs Carnell from the ACT Government. Nothing goes to her that this Minister does not know about beforehand, and very little of that.
Mr Kaine: And even if he knows, he will not tell her.
MR HUMPHRIES: If he knows, he will not tell her. We will have an opportunity to debate later the thing Mr Berry said today in question time. That is another matter; but it is typical, I would suggest with respect, of what goes on in the minds of some members of this Government.
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