Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2294 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Speaker, there has been already some considerable debate about this question of what is an appropriate time frame in which decisions can be exposed to the public gaze. Mr Moore's bill has stimulated that debate. I note that the ACT opposition has indicated in its statements in the last few months about open government that it believes that cabinet decisions should be available some six years after being made, but does not believe that that decision should affect decisions already made. I gather that the effect of the Labor Party position is that six years from the implementation of the change documents from the cabinet will start to become available.

Mr Speaker, that decision raises an interesting question about the effect that such legislation would have on the behaviour of a cabinet. I have sat in a number of cabinets and I have observed, as members of cabinet do, that discussions are free and frank in that forum. People will say things within the four walls of a cabinet which they certainly would not say in the public arena or perhaps say to anybody outside those walls.

The assumption about that process is that the cabinet is a place where, in a sense, the most important decisions of the territory need to be made. In a sense it is the top of the pyramid for decision-making throughout the territory, and therefore it is essential that all information be on the table in that setting, and that the information that is on the table be fully and frankly discussed and assessed. Facts that might not be politic to put on the table and to be talking about in another forum, such as perhaps the Assembly, or in the public arena in the media, need nonetheless to be available to cabinet so that cabinet can fully understand the background of and context for its decisions. So to understand what cabinet would do differently if the time frame were different in which its decisions would be exposed is at the crux of what this legislation is all about.

The position the Labor Party has espoused is that if cabinet members know that their decisions will be available six years after they make them, presumably they will make them in a different way; that their behaviour will be changed because they will know that six years from that point the public will be reading about what it is that they are discussing and debating.

That aspect of this concerns me because I think the cabinet is a place where decisions need to be discussed frankly and comprehensively, where discussion needs to be open and uninhibited, and where things ought to be said that perhaps cannot be said elsewhere. It would worry me if this exercise were to lead to decisions being modified or changed because of the knowledge that cabinet decisions in the relatively recent past were to be aired and therefore pressure placed back on members of that cabinet who might be experiencing a continuation of a public life at that stage and who might therefore have to go and defend their decisions.

Mr Speaker, in a nutshell, I believe it is important for us to define today how long we believe needs to elapse before a decision is put in the public arena. We then further need to decide whether that period should be 10 years or six years-I think that is the choice presently facing the Assembly-and whether that decision once made should apply prospectively only to future decisions or retrospectively.

Mr Speaker, the view of the Liberal Party in this matter is that the decisions should be exposed not after six years but after 10 years, and that they should be exposed more or less as at the point when the legislation has passed.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .