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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2741 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, if Mr Corbell was happy to wait until the end of question time he would get two answers today rather than just one. He would have the answer which I have on notice to give him and he would have another answer.

Mr Corbell: Answer it now.

MR HUMPHRIES: Obviously he is not patient enough to wait for that so he can only have one answer rather than two. I note in passing that Mr Corbell says that there is no difference between written documents and documents on paper. Well, a document appearing on a computer screen, of course, is a written document but not a document on paper, so there is a difference between those two things. I draw attention to that matter, Mr Speaker, not to rely upon that distinction to be able to avoid the tabling of the documents but rather to point out that there was potentially a reason why the documents were not supplied to the committee in the period that they were asked for. The committee asked for documents on 22 June to be supplied the following day, at 2 pm on 23 June, and officers in my department went off and searched the file, the written paper-based document, and did not find any of the documents that Mr Corbell has subsequently obtained under his freedom of information application. Now, had it been the intention of the officers concerned to conceal the information, one wonders why-

Mr Corbell: No, not their intention, yours, Mr Humphries.

MR HUMPHRIES: No. Okay. I can tell Mr Corbell-

Mr Corbell: Don't blame the public servant. Accept responsibility.

MR HUMPHRIES: If Mr Corbell would be quiet for a moment he might hear. I can tell Mr Corbell that I never looked at the file. I relied entirely on the information provided to me by my department. I don't think any minister does go away and search a file when we are asked to table particular documents relating to a particular subject. We simply don't have the time to do that. I dare say if you ever, by some miracle, make it onto this side of the chamber you will not have time to go and search the files personally yourself either.

I do know that Labor, when it was last in office, had a great mistrust of the public service and very often would call for the files to be brought over and would take them out of the hands of the public servants. Mr Speaker, I have never felt the need to do that because I have always felt the highest degree of confidence in the public servants who have served this government, at whatever level, whether they have been chief executives or ASO1s. I have always felt the greatest confidence in them to be able to provide competent and loyal service to the government of the day.

Mr Corbell: How about getting back to the substance of the question?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I don't know why I bother. There is yack, yack, yack all the time.

Mr Hargreaves: You are not answering the question. You are just babbling on.

MR HUMPHRIES: I have answered the question completely. I have. Mr Speaker, what we have here-

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