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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (5 May) . . Page.. 1390 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: I move:

Mr Speaker, we have had a lot of this debate already. The first amendment is about deleting reference to information or documentation which is, essentially, about a range of contracts which are presently covered by commercial-in-confidence clauses. Mr Speaker, I want to put on the record that the Government generally does not go out and seek commercial-in-confidence provisions in contracts. Commercial-in-confidence is almost always sought by the contracting party, the organisation that comes to the Government proposing a contractual arrangement. Mr Speaker, let me be clear, commercial-in-confidence provisions are not the innovation of the present Liberal Government. They were used extensively by the former Labor Government.

Ms Tucker: You have produced guidelines and principles on it.

MR HUMPHRIES: Yes, we have. Ms Tucker has raised the question of guidelines. I will come back to that in a moment. I just want to make a point before I do that. We have not invented the provision and we do not generally seek it out. It is normally sought by the private sector. Mr Speaker, the other factor is that it has been relied upon heavily in the past by members of the Labor Party. I remind members of the fact that when the VITAB scandal was breaking it was Mr Berry who relied very heavily on the commercial-in-confidence clause in the VITAB contract to prevent that contract ever being tabled on the floor of this place. We on this side have never seen that contract. Why? Because there was a commercial-in-confidence clause in there and the government of the day argued that it should not be tabled. Because of that, we did not move a motion at the time requiring you to table that document. We were not entitled to see that contract then, and that was a bigger scandal than this is ever going to be, I would suggest - I hope. That was a matter of enormous importance which cost the Territory taxpayers nearly $4m; but, in those circumstances, it was agreed by the Assembly that we not produce that document, that contract, because it was commercial-in-confidence. Why are we now saying that these contracts should not have that same protection? We should be consistent at least about that.

The second issue is the one raised by Ms Tucker a moment ago. It is true that we have guidelines about that. The guidelines are about - - -

Mr Berry: Tell us about your promise to give us the documents.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, if I could have a bit of shush.

Mr Hird: I cannot hear what the Minister is saying.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

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