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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4327 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (3.38): Mr Speaker, I have to oppose the motion that Mr Moore has moved.

Mr Moore: You still need open government, Gary.

MR HUMPHRIES: No, it is not a question about open government. It is a question about the legally appropriate way to proceed. My department, in fact, made the documents Mr Moore has referred to today available through FOI under principles of open government, if you like. My Government has no problem with the principle that people should be able to see documents in most circumstances. The suggestion, however, has been received from solicitors acting for Lend Lease that the release of at least some of those documents was inappropriate and ought not to have occurred had the principles of the FOI legislation been properly applied.

I do not wish to give details of the preliminary advice that I have received on that subject, but the advice does suggest that there is some basis for the argument that has been advanced by the solicitors for Lend Lease. I hope Mr Moore is listening to this, because this is quite important. I do not say that the Assembly should exclude access to information merely because the information is sensitive or offends some commercial interest or has some other reason for a proponent or advocate of a particular development wanting to stop that information going onto the public record. That is not a satisfactory basis on which to exclude information being available to the public, but legal advice that there may well be some problem pursuant to the freedom of information legislation in the releasing of certain information is a good reason. What the Speaker has said - - -

Mr Moore: Not if they are published by the Assembly.

MR HUMPHRIES: With respect, on the interjection, it should not be open to the Assembly to subvert the principles of the freedom of information legislation by using parliamentary privilege to overcome protections available in the legislation to people who get the benefit of the use of that legislation. If we build protections in the FOI legislation, they ought to be available to everybody, not just those who do not have friends in the Assembly who can table documents under parliamentary privilege. Mr Speaker, my argument is that we have obtained - - -

Mr Moore: What is the point of parliamentary privilege if - - -

MR HUMPHRIES: If Mr Moore would listen, he would hear. The Speaker has not ruled out the publication of these documents. He has said that legal advice should be obtained to determine whether, I suppose, the preliminary legal advice that I have had is to be confirmed or rejected. I think Mr Speaker's actions are appropriate in those circumstances, and he should obtain the advice before he decides whether to release the documents for publication. Mr Moore's concern is only at best a temporary one because, once advice is received, either documents will be published pursuant to the provisions that the Speaker has at his disposal, or they will not be published because of legal advice which I assume members of the Assembly would have some access to seeing in any case. Mr Speaker, I do not think that it is appropriate for the Assembly at this stage to defy the decision that you have made, and I would urge the Assembly to await the legal advice that you have commissioned.

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