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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2301 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Mr Speaker, I am one of the few people in this place whose deliberations in cabinet will be exposed by this legislation. Mr Humphries is another one, and Mr Kaine is another one, I think. On the face of the amendments that Mr Humphries proposes, it will take us back to about 1991. Is that right, Mr Humphries? Somewhere about then. About 1990.

Mr Humphries: Sorry, I was not listening.

Mr Moore: 1991, yes.

MR BERRY: Yes, it takes it back to 1991. On reflection, I really do not remember much about cabinet 10 years ago, but I am sure we had some full and frank discussions. Well, I know we had full and frank discussions about a whole range of things, none of which we expected to be subjected to this sort of exposure. That is not to say that I am walking away from any of the decisions that were made. It is merely that it is a bit like a retrospective law which imposes a punishment before the event. I am sure that that is what Mr Humphries and Mr Moore have in mind, to some extent at least-that they can trawl through the records of other cabinets and see whether they can find something which they can wave around in the lead-up to the next election. Well, good on them, if they are so fixated with this approach that they are taking in relation to the matter and that is what they want to do.

Mr Humphries used the analogy about the person who said to a woman, "If I give you $1,000 will you make love to me?" and then offered her $10. When she complained and said, "What do I think I am?" the person said, "We have already established what you are; it's just a matter of the price." Well, Mr Humphries, to use the same analogy in relation to your position, if you are so keen to expose somebody else's cabinet decisions and deliberations, why not expose your own of last week, or the week before, or the last six months, or the last 12 months, or the last three or four years? It gets to be nonsensical. It also gets to the situation where I think this sort of move threatens good government in the future.

I do not care if we do something prospectively and we say that cabinet decisions will be exposed one year after they are made as long as everybody knows the rules. I say that in the context of the principle here. You know the rules before you let yourself into the game. Mr Speaker, it goes to that basic issue of retrospectively.

Mr Stanhope raised the issue of Mr Moore's bill being made in the same period and in the same term of office of a particular government as the Territory Records Bill. Mr Moore established this bill, which he claims as his own, with the knowledge of cabinet or outside of cabinet, yet apparently he participated in the cabinet which set up the Territory Records Bill. Clause 25 of the Territory Records Bill says this:

A record of an agency is open to public access under this Act if 20 years has elapsed since the record, or the original of which it is a copy, came into existence.

It strikes me as an extraordinary piece of hypocrisy to be saying on the one hand that it is okay for one set of records to be available after 20 years and in the case of Mr Moore's bill it is six years, because that would not, of course, affect any of Mr Moore's deliberations in cabinet. He has been very careful to ensure that none of his deliberations in cabinet are exposed, only somebody else's.

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