Page 2591 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 24 August 1993
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Then there was the request I put in for the written submission made by the ACT Government to the review of Medicare. That is the Macklin report, the National Health Strategy, I think No. 2. In this case they did remit fees, but then they were unable to locate a copy. They did not say that they had not written one; they were unable to locate it. So that was not much good either. Then we had the requests for the legal opinions from 1986 to the present on HIV and AIDS notification. Again, fees were remitted, but the information was refused. Then we have information for the documents by ACT Health about the provision of methadone to prescribed addicts. If Mr Berry does not believe that that is in the public interest he has not looked at the facts. In this case, what happened was that the fees were not remitted because Mr Berry does not think that is in the public interest. We end up with the requests in December last year. One was on information re the corporate division, and again it was knocked back. More recently, the abortion clinic information request was knocked back. It was not in the public interest, according to Mr Berry.
It seems to me that the basis of good government, the basis of everything we believe in in any democratic situation, is to have information that is right and information that flows appropriately, particularly to the Opposition. That certainly does not seem to be the view of this Government, and I think it has to change.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.13): Mr Berry and I are both very enthusiastic to get at the Opposition on this, so there was a bit of tick-tacking as to who would have the first hit. The Opposition's claim is that somehow the ACT is being secretive, is misusing FOI, is denying the public and members of parliament access to information that they should rightfully have - or at least I think that is what they are saying. It almost sounds like special pleading for members of parliament rather than access to the public generally. I would think Mrs Carnell should say that everyone should have access, but she seems to be spending most of her time on special pleading for access for members of parliament.
We inherited an FOI Act as part of the self-government package. We did not as an Assembly enact an FOI Act; it was part of the structure of administrative law which we inherited.
Mr Humphries: We fixed it up.
MR CONNOLLY: There have been some changes, which Mr Humphries moved as a private member. One of the remarkable things, when one looks at the statistical record of FOI in the ACT since self-government, is the consistency in the rate at which waiver of fee or remission of fee applications have been granted - in the order of between 42 and 44 per cent consistently across each year and across each administration. The difference across administrations, as I have pointed out before, has been that the level of refusal of access under the Labor Government is considerably lower than the level of refusal of access under the Liberal Government. When Mr Kaine was in office as Chief Minister, when the Liberals held the reins of power in this Territory, there was a rather higher level of refusal of access.
Mr De Domenico: Who was the Minister responsible for that?
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