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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (6 November) . . Page.. 3713 ..

Clause 20

Amendment (by Ms Tucker) agreed to:

Page 11, line 26, after paragraph (a), insert the following paragraph:

"(aa) particulars of any comments submitted in relation to the draft report of the investigation pursuant to the invitation in subsection 17A(1), and of the Commission's response to those comments;".

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 21 agreed to.

Clause 22

MS TUCKER (12.20): I move:

Page 12, line 7, add the following subclause:

"(2) If a final report or a special report is divided under subsection (1), the Commission shall include in the document not containing the confidential or commercially sensitive material -

(a) a statement to the effect that such material is included in another document; and

(b) a description in general terms of the material in the other document.".

This amendment is aimed at ensuring that anyone who reads a commission report in which confidential or commercially sensitive information has been excluded is alerted to this exclusion. Under the Bill as it stands, a member of the public would never know whether information had been held back because it was assessed as being confidential, as the nature of such information would never be disclosed. At least by alerting the public to the existence of confidential material, there is the opportunity to try to get that information, should it be deemed necessary, through, first of all, the FOI Act and then through the AAT, if necessary.

I think it is a very important amendment that we are making here because it is, in a way, a start at addressing the issue of commercial-in-confidence. If we know what we are not getting, we have some idea of how scrutiny of particular activities is being affected by this qualification of commercial-in-confidence.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

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