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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 745 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

has considerable force. The prospect of Cabinet decisions being made with the full intrusion of lobbying interests and media speculation does not inspire confidence in stable decision-making.

There is a balance to be struck. Secrecy should not go on forever. Indeed, it should not go on for any longer than is necessary. I think that 10 years is long enough. Members may protest that in only 10 years politicians will still be in office when their decisions are brought to publication. Yes, that is likely, but in my view that is not a bad thing. When the need for immediate discretion has lapsed, I do not think that the mere embarrassment of an elected member who may not want their former policy stances exposed amounts to much of an argument.

When I have legislation of this kind drafted, I always attempt to make provision for any problems that may be caused by the political principle that I am putting forward. I think members will see in the Administration (Interstate Agreements) Act 1997 and the Government Contracts Confidentiality Bill of last week that there is often a need for exceptions and exclusions. So it is as well with this Bill, in which I propose two forms of exception from publication.

Firstly, there is a process by which a public interest justification can be used to delay release. This decision would be made not by a Minister but by the responsible chief executive, acting perhaps on legal advice. The public interest test includes the interests of the Territory in protecting relations with other governments. However, I propose a number of limits on these delays. They must only apply to parts of records with sensitive material and not be used in regard to non-sensitive material; they must be for no more than five years; they must be for no more than a total of 20 years; and, most importantly, they must be ratified by a nominated Assembly committee within three months of being issued.

Secondly, there is a general and permanent exemption from release of materials of a personal nature about individuals, the release of which would be a breach of privacy principles.

I wanted to avoid using 1 January as a release date for the ACT scheme to avoid confusion with the Commonwealth and because the ACT largely closes down in January and the media are often on a skeleton staff. I have instead proposed, perhaps on something of a whim, that we use the date 11 May as our annual release date, this being the anniversary of the first sitting of the Assembly in 1989. It has since been pointed that this date falls around budget time in our calendar, and I am certainly open to any ideas on alternative dates, although I think that, if anything, the date should be earlier in the year.

It should be clear to members that, if passed, the Bill would result in the release this year of the papers from 1989. An arrangement has been included in the Bill to give the Cabinet Office eight weeks from the commencement of the law to prepare for the new arrangements. Some members may view this with trepidation, as the first term of the Assembly is still regarded as a tumultuous period in which the Assembly failed to entirely cover itself in glory.

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