Page 978 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 31 March 1993
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We prosecute for fraud when we need to in this Territory. Members would accept that officials, in the course of their duties, come across information which, if it were sold or disseminated to other people, could be used to enrich themselves. All governments have traditionally had provisions which protect that type of information.
The Official Secrets Act is probably the wellspring of this type of provision - the old British Act which is so widely referred to in John le Carre spy novels and the like. That basic provision - that officials have a duty to protect the information that they come across in the course of their duties, and that the criminal law can intervene to protect that material and to create an offence in relation to the illegal dissemination of government material - is a fairly essential item that governments need in their armoury, not to protect, as Mr Moore says, public servants from scrutiny, but to protect the public interest so that people do not improperly use official information for misgain.
Open government is a principle which we would all accept. Freedom of information legislation has directed a significant change to the process of secrecy in government in Australia, but it needs to be done through the format of that legislation. Material which can be made available under the FOI Act is made available, but no-one suggests that FOI means open slather; that any government official can willy-nilly produce all sorts of documentation. Mr Moore accepts the principle himself when he introduces legislation in this Assembly to deal with an area of particular interest in relation to epidemiological studies. He accepts in the Bill that he presents that there can be a need for a secrecy clause, but he produces this general assault on what he says is secrecy in government, and legislation which he says in his introduction speech is designed to protect public servants.
The provisions of the Crimes (Offences Against the Government) Act are not designed to protect public servants; they are there to protect the public interest, to ensure that officials do not corruptly conduct themselves or enrich themselves by selling, trading or otherwise dealing with secret government information. With the use of the word "secret" one often tends to think of national security interests and the sorts of documents that would be floating around Foreign Affairs and Defence. Of course, we do not have that sort of documentation in the ACT. What we are talking about here is more the type of commercial material that officials in a range of our agencies deal with every day, and, if it were not for provisions like this, you would have the risk that people would corruptly and illegally sell that material on the open market and enrich themselves. You can perhaps get people under general corruption provisions for that type of conduct, but the fact of a provision making it an offence to disseminate official information is part of the armoury that governments across Australia have for themselves, and a provision, Madam Speaker, which I would recommend all members think very hard about before looking at change.
These types of provisions have not been altered for many years - I would acknowledge that - and our provisions are modelled on the Commonwealth provisions. The Gibbs committee, which was established by the Commonwealth some years ago to review Commonwealth criminal law and was chaired by the former Chief Justice of Australia, has made some comments about the way the Commonwealth secrecy provisions operate and has made some suggestions for reform. The Commonwealth is currently looking at implementing those Gibbs committee recommendations. My understanding is that governments around Australia with similar provisions also have that in mind. I would expect
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