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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2298 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

in this Assembly about the impact or the effect of this decision being made retrospectively, and the implications of that for previous members of cabinet and for previous public officials who had previously advised cabinet in relation to every issue that has come before the cabinet since self-government to date.

These are difficult and complex issues. Ministers have participated in the business of cabinet in an expectation that their discussions would not be revealed for 30 years. A whole raft of public servants, from the establishment of self-government to today, have made submissions to cabinet in the expectation that their submissions would not be released for 30 years. Yet here we have this roughshod approach suggesting, "Well, damn all those expectations. We don't even need to think about them or to consider the position of those people. We will just bung in a six-year retrospective provision so that every cabinet document from 1989 to 1995-96, or whenever it is, is automatically available for release irrespective of the expectations or positions of the people concerned, both ministers and public officials."

We have not come to a concluded view on how we would deal in the future with this period from self-government until now when we have begun this discussion about changing the period of disclosure other than to suggest here today that it is simply not acceptable or appropriate for us to be assuming that we can just change the rules midstream and seek to affect the rights of all of those people in this way.

Our position today is that retrospectivity should not be accepted, not today and not without some detailed discussion. I will be clear about it. Our position is that we should not accept a retrospective position in relation to the release of cabinet documents. This is an issue that should be considered more fully. It needs to be considered at least in the context of the Territory Records Bill, which I see goes to the 20-year period of disclosure for agency documents, including executive documents.

This is the enormous contrast that we are facing today. How ironic. The government brings in a bill today, a much awaited bill in relation to the management of documents, which provides for a 20-year period in relation to disclosure. Mr Moore agreed to that in cabinet. He agreed in cabinet to a 20-year period and then he rushed outside cabinet and developed his own bill which provides for a six-year period.

Mr Berry: Retrospectively.

MR STANHOPE: Retrospectively. We are talking about open and accountable government. The number one incident of accountable government in the Westminster system is that cabinets will accept a unity of purpose in decision-making. That is destroyed immediately. You can talk about open government and accountable government by saying, "Let's make all cabinet documents available." You can talk about it. The number one incident of accountable government in the Westminster system is the unity and solidarity of cabinet decision-making, and isn't it so ironic that that principle of cabinet solidarity does not apply in relation to this issue around the release of other governments' cabinet documents. We breach a universal principle in relation to responsible cabinet government in order, apparently, to show how open and accountable we are. Some of us, of course, are more open and more accountable than others irrespective of the principles that we trample along the way.

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