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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 477 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Now we are saying that documents that, I would argue, are deliberative documents created by the Government are not entitled to be kept confidential to the Government that created them. I am advised that the document concerned actually carries a "Cabinet-in-confidence" stamp on it, because it was considered by the Cabinet. It was part of a Cabinet paper, it was put before the Cabinet, and it has that stamp on it. Can a member explain to me why it is all right to have a document like that kept secret if the Government had changed between now and when it was created, but it is not secret while the Government is still in office? It makes no sense at all.

Mr Wood: No, you have got it all wrong.

MR HUMPHRIES: I invite you to rise and explain, Mr Wood, how that apparent contradiction can be explained.

Mr Wood: "Cabinet-in-confidence", once through Cabinet, often means public information.

MR HUMPHRIES: It does, if Cabinet agrees to do that; but often Cabinet considers documents it does not then release, particularly the Cabinet papers themselves, the Cabinet documents themselves. If the Government has not released the document, then it is still a document within the purview of the Cabinet process.

Ms McRae: Why did you give it to the CPSU, then?

MR HUMPHRIES: We did not give it to the CPSU.

Ms McRae: They responded to thin air?

MR HUMPHRIES: No; elements of it were discussed with the CPSU, but the document itself has not been to the CPSU. They were part of the process of consultation that took place in the consultancy's work. The document itself has not been released to anybody outside the Government. There is a contradiction there that members have not yet explained, and I would appreciate it if they did so.

I accept the point made by Ms Tucker that we should be rethinking the way in which we consider these sorts of deliberative processes. Maybe we should be starting to put documents on the table at an earlier stage. Maybe there is a case for us progressively opening up the process of consideration of these sorts of issues within the Government process. All that is arguable and debatable and has an intellectual foundation that is worth considering. But the point I make about this particular document is that it was created and contributed to by various parties, including commercial parties, on the assumption that the document would not be released publicly. People were told when they submitted information to this process, "This information is not going to be publicly released. You can be frank and open about your commercial objectives in this process".

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