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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 2644 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

There are a number of very important public policy issues that this threat has raised for me. Obviously, the right of free speech is one issue. In the course of my research on this issue over the past six weeks, I have also studied the ACT's defamation laws much more closely and can see that indeed work is needed there. The Community Law Reform Committee report on this matter needs to be acted upon. Despite the diversity of opinions, there was not one which favoured the retention of the existing ACT law. The report concluded:

The existing defamation laws are obscure, contradictory and fragmented. These laws were inherited from New South Wales early this century but have since been repealed by that State.

However, this threat has raised more issues than just the right of free speech, as I have said already. There are very important environmental issues at stake. This issue has also reinforced my concerns about the social and environmental accountability of publicly-owned corporations.

Mr Speaker, the electricity market is extremely complex. I wish to raise the substantive environmental issues associated with the operation of the national electricity grid at another time. I think it is a matter of great public importance to determine how the statutory requirement of ACTEW to conduct its operations in compliance with the principles of ecologically sustainable development is to be judged. We live in a world of ever-increasing corporatisation, privatisation, outsourcing and contracting out. What is being left behind in the rush for greater efficiency is too often little concern about accountability and the public interest.

One of the central features of the commercialisation of services previously delivered by core government agencies is the need to define community service obligations. The long-promised community service obligations have barely been delivered. One of the recommendations of the Assembly Select Committee on Competition Policy was that explicit community service obligations for ACTEW be developed. Opening up everything to the market is unfortunately too often not in the best interests of either social or environmental outcomes. These are all matters worthy of lengthy debate and consideration by members of this place.

One of the really interesting issues is the definition of commercial-in-confidence and how it is used. I noted in the Government's spring legislative timetable a Bill which appears to be about weakening the freedom of information instrument as a means of getting information of public importance when a company has chosen to describe it as commercially sensitive. I look forward to seeing the detail of that Bill. I think privacy issues will be the sleeping issues in the next couple of years in Australian politics. We have to recognise that experts believe that 95 per cent of information which companies and departments choose to claim as commercial-in-confidence, by which it is taken to mean commercially secret, is in fact merely sensitive and that there should be ways that responsible legislatures can more easily access that information or a summary of that information in the interest of accountability. I am disappointed that in this case the Minister was not aware of the contract that was signed until after it was signed and that we can get no real information about the process of deciding on that contract.

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