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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (10 May) . . Page.. 1353 ..

MR QUINLAN (12.08): Mr Speaker, I had not intended to speak in this debate. However, I want to make one or two points very quickly. First of all, according to what the Chief Minister has said the commercial world out there is very precious indeed. I rather think that, driven by the profit motive, they are not nearly so precious as what she would imply.

The other point that I wanted to make is that it was only in the last minute or so of a very long speech that the Chief Minister used the term "detrimental". The bulk of the speech centred on the Chief Minister's test as to whether the release of information would contribute to the public good. That attitude might go to the heart of other problems that we have had in this place. I rather think that the test has got to be whether the release of the particular information would have a negative or detrimental impact on the public good. The public good here relates to accountability and open government.

Ms Carnell: All the information is available.

MR QUINLAN: Excuse me, Mr Speaker. Would you name her.

MR SPEAKER: Order, please. I do not want interjections from either side of the house, thank you.

MR QUINLAN: The onus, in this case, is not on the requestor to justify asking for information in this place. It is fairly damn obvious that we are here for specific purposes related to government of the territory. The onus must always rest on the withholder of the information.

I will conclude by observing that Ms Carnell accused Mr Stanhope of engaging in a political stunt. If it is a political stunt, kill it by giving the information requested or justifying the withholding of it. Do one or the other.

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (12.11): Mr Speaker, I want to emphasise the issue which has been raised by the Chief Minister about the value of the exercise which is being undertaken here. Being cynical, one would have to conclude that anything at all which was being said about Bruce Stadium, anything at all that could be used to generate a headline or produce a motion or some kind of other publicity about Bruce Stadium, would be in the interests of the opposition in this place. What we are seeing today is, therefore, not surprising at all. I do not begrudge the opposition an opportunity to use issues of this kind to some degree for political advantage. I acknowledge that this is a likely scenario, and that we are going to see this kind of publicity arising out of Bruce Stadium.

At the request of Mr Stanhope, the Chief Minister tabled a large amount of information about Bruce Stadium. Mr Stanhope has come back and asked for the things that he was not given. I ask members to put themselves in the position of the Chief Minister when this particular request for information was made in the first place by Mr Stanhope and Mr Berry. It was very obvious to anybody that whatever we did not provide to Mr Berry and Mr Stanhope would become the subject of at least an adverse press release, and certainly adverse comment in the media about secrecy, lack of openness, unaccountability and so on. We knew all those things would come out and we also

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