Page 3651 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 20 October 1993
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pay the appropriate amount of money. The reality is that for the ordinary citizen there is a cost associated with freedom of information and it is a process that most members of the public find threatening. They find it difficult to deal with. There are public servants who realise that information that is available to them may well need public scrutiny in the public interest.
It will be interesting to see the legislation that the Liberals introduce as far as whistle-blowing goes. If we are to use Mr Connolly's argument from before, yes, there is whistle-blowing legislation in a number of places in Australia and therefore, of course, the Government will support it, using that exact same logic - that because it is in other places we have to support it; if they are doing it, it must be right. Mr Connolly said this in his speech:
These types of provisions have not been altered for many years - I would acknowledge that - and our provisions are modelled on the Commonwealth provisions.
Then he talked about the Gibbs committee and so forth. Because we have had them for many years does not mean to say that they are very good laws. Because we have had them for many years does not mean that they serve the public interest. Because we have had them for many years does not mean that they are right.
I would like to put this into perspective, Madam Speaker, and to say that where we are talking about crimes committed against the Government it is inappropriate that those crimes should be able to be committed. It seems to me that we are talking about things such as stealing and we are talking about things such as information. I think a bank is a good comparison. A comparison could be made with a whole series of other places in private enterprise. A firm like BHP would be another good example. It seems to me that where laws apply to the Government they ought to apply also to private enterprise. That is what is fundamentally wrong with the provisions in this Act. In each of those circumstances and in each of the parts of the Act that we look at, Madam Speaker, you will see that we are dealing with issues that are of concern not only to members of the public and the public service but also to businesses such as those that I have mentioned before.
Madam Speaker, with those few words, I think it is important to urge members to realise that they have this last opportunity to see the light; to realise that this is a very sensible Bill and a sensible and concrete response to an issue, unlike the Liberals' hot air. It is all right for the Liberals, Mr Humphries in particular, to come out and say, "Oh, horror, scream; look what they have done to the Canberra Times". He wants to be onside with Chris Uhlmann. It did not even work, because Chris Uhlmann left the Canberra Times anyway, as it turned out. Nevertheless, he wants to be onside with the Canberra Times; so he says, "Oh horror, oh scream; we have a terrible position, a horrible position here, and we have to do something about it". The something we do about it is to keep saying, "Oh shock, oh horror", and we get an editorial from the Canberra Times which, hopefully, mentions Mr Humphries's name. So he gets his name up in a bit of light if he is lucky. Then he manages to make a noise and to see what he can do about this issue.
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