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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4939 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

The principles of commercial-in-confidence are as complex as they are important. This Government believes that there must be some protection for commercially sensitive information. Indeed, our response to the Estimates Committee stated that if private companies could not rely on normal arrangements which protect commercially sensitive information there would be a real risk that many of these firms might not choose to deal within the Territory. However, I have to say that there have been some occasions, in fact, more than some occasions, when departments may have been unnecessarily oversensitive about the release of some information. I believe that that is one of the issues that we should take on in a new Assembly. That is why we told the Estimates Committee that we were happy to re-examine issues surrounding commercial-in-confidence, and I have asked the Chief Minister's Department to develop proposals along these lines. These proposals will be presented to the incoming Government after the next election and the Assembly at that stage may well choose to consider referring these matters to a committee for consideration.

Mr Speaker, I know that the Labor Party has tried to make much out of the issue of commercial-in-confidence. Indeed, who can forget Mr Berry coming in here and screaming blue murder about the contract for the National Capital Private Hospital. Do you not remember Mr Berry saying, "Table the contract, Mrs Carnell; table the contract". Mr Berry's demands back in May were interesting, to say the least. Indeed, he went so far as to say, on 15 May:

I do not accept that we are prohibited from finding out what little secrets are buried in those contracts.

I even received a letter from Mr Berry, as chair of a select committee, in which he threatened to take all sorts of action if I did not give him a copy of the contract. Indeed, in that letter he stated that it was a fundamental right of his committee to call for and examine any and every document that it wanted, and it did not matter what I said; he would get his hands on the contract.

Mr Speaker, there probably are two things that Mr Berry has a problem with in this Assembly, and they are consistency and credibility. Let us talk a little about commercial-in-confidence, consistency and credibility. Let me remind Mr Berry and members of the Assembly about the little matter of the VITAB contract, a contract that Mr Berry used to be so proud of when he was Minister for Sport. Just to refresh his memory and to give members a little bit of a laugh on the last sitting day, I am going to table for members - in fact, I will circulate it for members - the copy of the contract that we got when we sought the contract under freedom of information. By the way, I paid for that because Mr Berry said it was not in the public interest that the Opposition should have the information.

Mr Berry: Not for free. You should not get it for free.

MRS CARNELL: No, I did not get it for free. I paid for it.

Mr Berry: No, neither should you have.

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