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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3801 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

truck drivers to deliver equipment at Bruce Stadium. What is politically sensitive about that? The government refused to release information that it was going to engage ushers to assist people to their places at Bruce Stadium. What is commercially sensitive about that? How can that possibly be commercially confidential? It cannot be. It was just a device designed to complete some other governmental purpose in the refusal to issue the information.

Inappropriate claims or commercial - in - confidence applied also to each of the user agreements for Bruce Stadium, which contained nothing that the public did not have a right to know. The contracts that dealt with the expenditure of large amounts of public moneys for the purposes of supporting or fostering the arrangements of football teams at Bruce Stadium contained absolutely nothing that the people of the ACT did not have a right to know about in respect of how their money was being spent. Two of those agreements were drafted after the issuing of the Chief Minister's guidelines in relation to the use of so - called confidentiality clauses. Those contracts were in breach of those guidelines. I could go on and on.

Much of the information I sought in relation to the issues around the redevelopment of Bruce Stadium was not released to me, on the basis that it was supposedly commercially sensitive or commercial - in - confidence. It quite clearly was not and quite clearly is not. There was a completely inappropriate use of the guidelines or the catch - cry of "commercial - in - confidence", a catch - cry that was used quite openly and deliberately to prevent access to information which the government, for reasons that often desert me, was determined not to reveal because, for some reason, they thought it would reflect poorly on them. It was nothing to do with the nature of the information or the supposed existence of a commercial or confidential arrangement, but a determination to keep from public gaze an issue that the government of the day perceived to be embarrassing to them or not in their best interests.

The latest example is quite bizarre. A couple of weeks ago, in response to a question on notice in relation to the development of a wine industry in the ACT, the Chief Minister advised me that neither I nor members of this Assembly nor anybody in the ACT community was entitled to know what the government charges for grey water. The latest state secret is the price of grey water. The price we charge for grey water from the treatment plant is too commercially sensitive to be made available to me, to this Assembly or to the people of Canberra. The price that the ACT sells its dirty water at is so sensitive, is such a matter of commercial importance, that neither the Leader of the Opposition nor the ACT Legislative Assembly is to be apprised of it. That decision is justified on the basis that the cost of dirty water in the ACT is a commercially confidential piece of information.

I would love somebody to explain to me why the price of our dirty water is so sensitive that none of us is allowed to know what we sell it at. How absurd is that? A major user of grey water from the water treatment plant is the winery at Holt. We sell it to them to irrigate 40 hectares of grapes, but the price at which we sell it is too sensitive for the community to be apprised of it.

These amendments at least put the acid on the government to disclose where it is relying on commercial - in - confidence. We all accept that there is a whole range of areas where it is appropriate that governments do that, where it is appropriate that arrangements be

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