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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2297 ..

MR STANHOPE: We think. I think it goes to the heart of much of the debate that we have had. It is also relevant to the Auditor-General's report that was tabled yesterday in terms of the difficulties in understanding the accountability mechanisms or regimes that apply in this place.

We have before us, tabled today, the government's position in relation to the management, storage and release of executive records, namely, the Territory Records Bill 2001. It was tabled just half-an-hour ago. None of us have yet had an opportunity to look at it, but we know it deals with the management and release of executive records. Now, half-an-hour after we received the government's position on this issue, a position signed up to by Mr Moore as a member of the cabinet, we are debating the Executive Documents Release Bill which is inconsistent with the Territory Records Bill which has just been tabled. This is an absolute nonsense. We have a cabinet minister signing up to the Territory Records Bill on the very day that we are debating another bill that he has tabled dealing with the same subject, in an environment where none of us have had an opportunity to see what the government's response is to this very important issue.

The government has not responded to the justice committee's report in relation to the Executive Documents Release Bill which was tabled two days ago. This is budget week. We have all been occupied on other very important matters. The most important bill to come before the Assembly this year, or in any year, is being debated this week. An Assembly committee tabled a report two days ago, the government has not responded to that report, and here we are debating the outcomes. It is just absurd for this place to be dealing with this issue in this way. The government has not responded to a report tabled two days ago. The government has provided its own blueprint for the management and release of executive documents, one which none of us have yet had an opportunity to look at or to investigate, and we are debating a bill dealing with that very same subject.

So one does wonder at this doppelganger position that Mr Moore adopts in relation to these things. He is a part of the cabinet that agrees to the Territory Records Bill, but then he steps straight outside the cabinet door and introduces another bill.

This Executive Documents Release Bill raises, as the Chief Minister has just said, some quite profound issues relating to the release of cabinet documents. As the Chief Minister has said, the Labor Party has indicated that we support open and accountable government. The Labor Party indicated just this year that we would support a prospective arrangement whereby cabinet documents would be released after six years. The proposal that I outlined would involve the release of cabinet documents after the passing of two clear Assemblies, namely six years. We would have envisaged a provision coming into effect after the next election and that it would affect only documents of those two particular parliaments. What I was suggesting was that all the cabinet documents of the previous two Assemblies would not be subject to release until that third Assembly, so that there would be two intervening elections before any documents would be released.

At no stage has the Labor Party proffered a position in relation to the retrospective release of documents. We have not developed a position in relation to this interregnum, the period between the establishment of self-government in the ACT and the passage of this legislation as we envisage it to take effect, perhaps, from a date after the next election. We were indicating that we acknowledge the very points that have been made

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