Page 839 - Week 03 - Thursday, 14 April 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR HUMPHRIES (12.02): Madam Speaker, I move:
That the report be noted.
This is the second matter on which the Administration and Procedures Committee has reported to the Assembly arising out of the Estimates Committee report of last year. Ms Szuty, as the chair of that committee, raised the question of the nature of the Government's response to that committee report at about the time she tabled the report. She indicated that there appeared to be a number of comments in the Government's response to the report which were responses not to recommendations of the final report tabled in the Assembly but to the third draft report of the Estimates Committee, which of course was not tabled in the Assembly. Ms Szuty was able to cite at least three examples of recommendations in the Government's response which were different in wording from the recommendations contained in the committee's final report. Quite appropriately, as a result of raising that concern, the house decided to refer the matter of this report to the Administration and Procedures Committee to investigate whether a contempt or some breach of the standing orders had occurred.
I might comment briefly on the composition of the committee dealing with such an inquiry. It is obvious that the three members of the Administration and Procedures Committee were also members of that Select Committee on Estimates. It was noted that, in an Assembly of only 17 members, at least 11 of whom had been members of the Estimates Committee, four of whom were Ministers appearing before the committee, and you also appeared before the committee, Madam Speaker, it was very difficult to appoint a workable committee that had no involvement with the Select Committee on Estimates that prepared the report.
The members of the Administration and Procedures Committee nonetheless decided that it was appropriate for that committee to consider the matter and to ensure that appropriate measures were taken to prevent the members of the committee having a conflict of interest, principally by ensuring that members were not present when their own responses to the requests for information sent out by the committee were considered by the committee.
There were two issues before the committee. One was the question of whether a breach of standing orders had occurred, being particularly standing orders 241 and 242. Standing order 241 says, essentially, that evidence taken by a committee and documents of the committee shall be strictly confidential and shall not be published or divulged. Standing order 242 makes similar reference to the confidentiality of information put before committees. The other issue before the committee was the question of contempt. It is well established that the releasing of information before a committee is potentially to be regarded as contempt of the committee where that has been done in such a way as to undermine the process or to subvert the process of the committee's report.
Madam Speaker, the Administration and Procedures Committee wrote to all the members of the Estimates Committee and to the Treasurer to ask the essential question: Do any of you know how Treasury officials apparently came into possession of either a draft copy of the report or information concerning the recommendations and conclusions of the draft report of the Estimates Committee? The suggestion that there was some access to either
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .