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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4244 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

The committee has a responsibility to the Assembly in relation to the financial affairs of the Territory and may exercise delegated compulsive powers in relation to the provision of papers and records. While the committee chose not to exercise these powers in view of the time constraints on the inquiry, it notes with concern the unwillingness of the department to provide information, even on a confidential basis, which would allow the committee to reach an informed position on the benefits to the Territory of funds and assets granted to certain private companies. This has been a major obstacle for the committee, and it is a matter on which the committee would expect the PAC in the next Assembly to focus.

Mr Speaker, the report - paragraphs 1.22 to 1.28 in particular - deals with the issue of confidentiality and commercial-in-confidence. When this reference was first made to the committee, there was a great deal of acknowledgment on both sides of the house, and from the crossbenches, of the importance of dealing sensitively with confidential or commercially sensitive information, or information which had been provided to the Government on a confidential basis. Notwithstanding that acknowledgment at the time the reference was made, the capacity of the committee to deal responsibly with confidential information was not followed up in the deliberations of the committee. In particular, I draw attention to two of the paragraphs of the committee's report. Paragraph 1.27 says:

The committee has become aware in recent times of an increasing use of the "commercial in confidence" claim for the non disclosure of documents to committees and considers that the principles outlined above -

parliamentary scrutiny -

may have been misunderstood ...

Paragraph 1.28 says:

The underlying principle should be that if information can be disclosed to the government on a confidential basis there is no reason for it not to be disclosed to an Assembly committee also on a confidential basis.

Mr Speaker, I think that is essential if there is to be a proper process of accountability to this place and scrutiny in this place.

In particular, the majority of the committee had the view that the amounts of assistance provided to private companies ought not to be the subject of confidentiality agreements. Some of the larger assistance packages offered under the business incentive scheme, particularly to AOFR/ADC, which is reputed to be in excess of $1m, and the assistance package offered to Fujitsu, were unable to be scrutinised at all, because all aspects of those arrangements were claimed to be commercial-in-confidence. In fact, at one stage in the public hearings the department even claimed commercial-in-confidence for information which was available in their annual report. That suggests, Mr Speaker,

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