Page 3039 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 September 1994
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Mr Deputy Speaker, it seemed to me that in preparing this report the committee was particularly careful to ensure that we qualified what we were saying and justified it by reference to the evidence presented to us and then made some further suggestions. We are all interested in what Mr Connolly has started, and that is the reduction of fuel prices. Nobody can take that away from Mr Connolly. I mentioned one of the five specific recommendations. The others are recorded there. Recommendation 7.18 is one that I think the Government should consider particularly carefully.
There is another point I would like to draw attention to, Mr Deputy Speaker. It was raised by Mr Connolly and reiterated by Ms Ellis in her dissenting report. She commented:
While I accept the Committee's view that certain commercial information should be allowed to be given in confidence, I cannot accept that allegations made by individuals or organisations are within this category. Such allegations could be given credence without the person or persons involved being given the opportunity to defend themselves. In fact, for any committee to make findings based on allegations of that kind could be considered a breach of natural justice.
Mr Deputy Speaker, it is important that allegations be able to be made. That is why our committees operate with parliamentary privilege and that is why we extend our parliamentary privilege to the people who appear before us - so that they can speak without fear or favour. The responsibility is on the committee not to misuse those allegations. Those allegations become the allegations of the committee and they then need to seek to ensure that social justice applies. That is why it is that I think Mr Connolly was very wrong when he raised the matter in the way he did during the Assembly committee's hearing, and the way that Ms Ellis's dissenting comments are worded is wrong as well.
I do not disagree with the sentiment behind it, and that is that natural justice must prevail. But there is a higher order of responsibility: The freedom of speech and the freedom of people to make allegations within this context. We must be on our guard to ensure, as far as we can, that we do not misuse it. I think we had a good example in this committee where quite strong and extensive allegations were made. They were contained by the committee. I must say that they were effectively dismissed by the committee as being scuttlebutt, because that is, indeed, what some of the allegations were. Nevertheless, people still should feel free to raise those and let the committee find its own way to deal with them. I believe that the committee dealt with them in a very appropriate way by exposing those allegations to those people who were accused and giving them the opportunity to respond. Having done that, we then dismissed them. Mr Deputy Speaker, the Government should consider these recommendations very carefully because it was not lightly that I supported the recommendations made by this committee at all. I supported them after a great deal of thought and a great deal of care in listening to the evidence.
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