Page 1051 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 April 1994
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Government has shown in its cavalier approach it is prepared to do and as this Opposition is prepared to connive at, although when trying to take the high moral ground in the Canberra Times Mrs Carnell says, "No, no; that is unacceptable" but at the same time gets involved in the process and happily makes use of such information - the citizens of Australia have a right to lose confidence in the police force.
In years to come, when VITAB and VicTAB and all the circumstances surrounding that issue are long forgotten, the issue of politicisation of a police force - the issue of political use of police files by the Victorian Liberal Government - will still be around. It is an issue that I intend to take very seriously to my colleague police Ministers at the upcoming police Ministers ministerial forum, and I would expect to get a strong reaffirmation from that forum that it is completely unacceptable for Ministers of the Crown to get access to police records and to then pass them around to their political mates in order to run a political job.
The proper course for Mr Reynolds was clear. If he felt that that information needed to be communicated, the proper course would have been to communicate it to Mr Berry as the Minister responsible at the time or to communicate it to me as chief law officer. His defence is that he was justified in getting into secret police files and passing information to the Opposition because they raised a serious - - -
Mr Westende: Not secret police files.
MR CONNOLLY: Police files are secret, and the document that I have just tabled shows the very limited circumstances in which even I, as police Minister, have access to them. Mr Reynolds acknowledges that that material was derived from police sources. He has acknowledged that in the Victorian Parliament. Read your Victorian Hansard, read what has happened in the Victorian Parliament, or look at what he said on the media last night. If you go into police records and you think they show something that is very significant, you have a clear duty to pass that on to the chief law enforcement officer in the jurisdiction under question.
How would you feel if, when nominations are lodged for the next election in the ACT - and we can expect a very large number of candidates - I as police Minister started delving into police files to find out anything on candidates? You properly would say, "That was an outrageous abuse of power". What you people are doing is the same. What the Victorian Government has done has seriously undermined public confidence in the police record keeping system of Australia. It is an outrageous thing to do. If it had been shown that I as a Minister had done such a thing, I would expect to be tendering my resignation to this chamber, because it is totally unacceptable conduct. Mr Berry, in summary, there are no circumstances in which I as a Minister in this Labor Government, which upholds convention and principle, would pass police information on even to my best friends on Labor front benches in other parts of Australia.
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