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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 481 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

By giving the depreciated value on the record, it means that nobody is going to bid above that. It also gives pages and pages of information that I expect will be extremely useful to the private sector. What you could do from now on is make sure that the Government does these sorts of consultancies, so that the private sector does not have to do its own, I suppose.

For all of that, to go down a path of making it public, rather than just making it available to members of the Assembly, I think, is a really dangerous approach. Certainly, the amendment makes it marginally better, but it will take some time for officers to go through the whole document and get rid of all the bits that are commercial-in-confidence. Unfortunately, they are not all in one slab. As Mr Moore said, bits will have to be taken out of it in various places. Again, I think the Assembly should think about it. Those opposite should think about their approach in the past. Ms Follett this morning made comments about deliberative documents. She said that they should not be available to the Assembly, should not even be available to the next government when it is looking at exactly the same issue.

We are talking now about a Cabinet document; we are talking about a precedent that could cause a problem. Again, I am operating here only on advice that I am being given by public servants, who I believe are doing a very good job in this area. The advice they give me is that it would be extraordinarily dangerous for this document to become public, that it would undermine their position substantially. I have to go on their advice, and that is the advice I am being given. If this Assembly believes that it knows better, without having seen the document, I am very surprised. Maybe what the Assembly should do is say, "Let us have a look at it and then make a decision on whether it is tabled".

MS FOLLETT (Leader of the Opposition) (12.31): Very briefly, this is the first we have heard from the Chief Minister that this is or was ever a Cabinet document. Having looked at the document, from where I stand to where it sits on Mrs Carnell's desk, I note that it has nowhere upon it any mark that says "Cabinet-in-confidence". It has been my experience in Cabinet that every copy of a document that goes to Cabinet is marked "Cabinet-in-confidence". Quite frankly, I have some doubts about whether this is a Cabinet document. Mrs Carnell has also said that I had argued for Cabinet documents to be offered greater protection. That is most certainly not what I said this morning. I said this morning that I took issue with the Government's definition of what constituted deliberative documents of a previous government. That was the import of my comments this morning, and I very much resent Mrs Carnell trying to twist and turn statements I made in the way that she has. Again, it indicates to me that she has something to hide.

What we are seeing here is a Government policy of massive change to the work force, of contracting out all of the information technology provision for the Government. That will affect many workers in the work force and it will affect the community, and on that basis alone the Assembly has a right to full information. On the general question of contracting out, we will see more and more of this commercial-in-confidence nonsense. All it means is that the community loses any notion of accountability for actions taken by government and for expenditure made by government. If contracting out means no accountability, frankly, the community would be much better off without it.

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