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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 475 ..

MR KAINE (12.07): I fear that the Assembly, as it often does, on the basis of a single issue, a single case, is getting into a debate that should be a much broader debate than this and one that perhaps should result in some determination about government documents that should be publicly disclosed and those that should not. I know that it is very popular these days to talk about open government. It is a fine nebulous notion, but I sometimes wonder whether people who talk about open government can really define what they are talking about. The fact is that governments, like any enterprise, are engaged from time to time in business that can reasonably be classified as commercial-in-confidence. If we are going to suggest that any corporation should declare all of its negotiations open for public scrutiny, we would be laughed out of town. It would destroy any competitive edge they might have if they were required to do that.

While you can argue that what governments and public servants do is in the public interest and, therefore, ought to be totally on the table and totally disclosed, I think you can also argue that there are some things government does, some things the bureaucracy does, that are no different from what is done in private enterprise. Government, in fact, is in competition, in some of its activities, in the commercial workplace. If we are going to argue that we should put government at a disadvantage in relation to all other contenders by being the only participant that is required to put all of its negotiating positions on the table, I submit that we are getting into an area of absurdity. It is nonsense to suggest that governments and public servants do not engage in negotiations, discussions and the like with other parties where what they disclose to the Government is commercial-in-confidence. It would be unfair and unreasonable, and probably unlawful, for the Government to disclose information that is made available to it by people engaged in the competitive process. I think we need to be a bit careful when we start talking about open government and lead then to the interpretation that that means that everything the Government does, everything the bureaucracy does, every document that comes into their possession, must be openly declared and put on the table in this house. I submit that people in this chamber who argue that have no sense of responsibility, none whatsoever.

I know nothing about the document Mr Moore is seeking to have available to him - I have not seen it; I do not know what is in it - but I do accept the argument by the Chief Minister that there is some information in that document that would be detrimental to others if it were publicly disclosed. There may be some information in there that would be detrimental to the Government's interests, and therefore to the public interest, if it were publicly disclosed. If the Leader of the Opposition and Mr Berry are going to argue that it is not possible for that kind of information to be in such a document, I submit that they have learnt nothing from being in government. I will guarantee that, in the five years the Leader of the Opposition was Chief Minister of this place, many documents went through her hands, went through Cabinet, that she would not have been happy to release in their entirety for public scrutiny. That is the nature of government. There are some things where it is not in the public interest, there are some things where it is not in the interests of private individuals, that information and documents in the hands of the Government should be publicly disclosed.

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