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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (10 May) . . Page.. 1402 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

What do members opposite want the government to do? Do they want information on every conceivable commercial deal to be put on the table? What confidence can that give any business that wants to do business here in the territory and invest money here? Certainly, a business has to be prepared for a reasonable amount of public disclosure if that is in the public interest. But surely if you took it to the logical, ridiculous extreme, you could have every conceivable commercial deal with anything remotely affecting the government or relevant to government entities being made public. When they do their dealings, they might as well invite all the TV cameras, the radio stations and the papers in. Quite clearly, you could go to a ridiculous extreme.

We need to pause and separate the base, blatant and stupid politics from the real question of public interest. This motion risks taking it to ridiculous extremes. Maybe we have opened a few too many Pandora's boxes already in some of the discussions we have had in recent times about what is commercial interest and what is not and what should be produced. This motion would take it one further step that is not in the public interest and potentially, could have a very detrimental effect on people running a business, certain details of which should properly be in the public domain but certain details of which should not be in the public domain.

I recall debate in 1994, when the present Chief Minister, quite rightly, was trying to extract from the then government details of the Canberra Milk sponsorship of the Raiders.

Ms Carnell: Direct sponsorship.

MR STEFANIAK: Direct sponsorship. Thank you, Chief Minister. Members will recall that at the time the Raiders were the Canberra Milk Raiders. They did very well. Mr Osborne remembers that year very well because he set up two tries in the grand final.

At 5.00 pm the debate was interrupted in accordance with standing order 34; the motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.

MR STEFANIAK: Quite properly and quite reasonably, the Chief Minister was trying to extract that information. I do not think anyone would dare to suggest-if they did, they would be complete hypocrites-that that sort of information should not be available now. In fact, this government has given similar information and much more, in perhaps much more dubious circumstances, to the relevant bodies as a result of Assembly concerns. When Ms Carnell asked for information, the then Labor government objected. They said it was commercial-in-confidence and Ms Carnell did not pursue that issue for that reason, quite properly so. If we tried to hide behind commercial-in-confidence now with respect to a body that used public money to fund a sporting team, the Assembly would have our heads. There is a fair bit of hypocrisy in this motion being brought on, when one looks at the ALP's record.

Investment in Canberra is important, and where to draw the line is very important. There is such a thing as the public interest. What is the public interest? That is the test I would ask members to look at here. Is this information which Mr Stanhope seeks in the public interest, or does it really go over the top? Is it information that would persuade

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