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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4573 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

attempted to publish this before the date concerned, I do not personally propose to take any further action on the matter. The matter has been drawn to the attention of the Electoral Commissioner. He is well aware of what has occurred. It is open to him now to take action on the matter. I do not enforce those regulations in that sense, particularly when in any case it is an arm of government which is involved in the breach. It is more appropriate for that to be done by the Electoral Commissioner.

MR WHITECROSS: Mr Speaker, I have a supplementary question. Minister, in your answer you indicated that you were, in fact, in Japan on the Friday, the day that this regulation was gazetted. Are you therefore saying that this was gazetted before you signed the regulation? That is the first part of my supplementary question. The second part of my supplementary question is: Since the advertising supplement was in breach of your regulations and in breach of the principle you laid down in January 1995, that advertising which features photos, statements or signatures of politicians will not be paid for by the ACT Government, will you pay for the supplement?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, the answer to the first supplementary question is no. The answer to the second question is that I do not have copyright in all the photographs of me that might appear around the place, nor do you have copyright in your photographs.

Mr Whitecross: It is a government department.

MR HUMPHRIES: But I did not ask the government department to publish it; quite the contrary. The Government instructed government agencies not to publish photographs of Ministers or members of the Assembly. It was a clear direction. It was made in Cabinet. The decision was disseminated, or we intended that it be disseminated, to all relevant areas of the Public Service. Obviously, it did not reach this area in time to assist in not publishing this on that due date. Certainly, as I understand it, efforts were made to ensure that the area concerned did not publish any photographs of their own Minister. I gather that some possibility that it might have done so originally was averted by their deliberately taking the step of removing a photograph of their own Minister.

In the circumstances, I have done all that was reasonably possible - short of roaming through the corridors of various agencies of government and searching through drawers to try to find anything that might contain a photograph of me - to prevent that from being published. I might say that it is pretty rich to have criticism from this Opposition of the steps this Government has taken on this score, when you people plastered your photographs all over government publications ad nauseam in the period right up until the elections in 1995 and 1992. I do not have the folder with me at the moment - but I am sure that it is coming down right now - containing all of the examples of breaches of this principle by the former Labor Government.

Ms McRae: You created the principle retrospectively. Get away! It is your idea, not ours.

MR HUMPHRIES: No. Mr Speaker, I am not saying - - -

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