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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2302 ..

Mr Moore: You were the ones who suggested six years.

MR BERRY: Mr Moore disingenuously and dishonestly intervenes and says, "You were the one who suggested six years." We said "prospectively".

Mr Moore: We are not debating years. We are talking about prospectively.

MR BERRY: Prospectively.

Mr Moore: That is a different debate.

MR BERRY: It is not a different debate, Michael. It is the same debate. It is an entirely different principle. It is about prospectively. Mr Moore, if you were fair dinkum you would expose your own cabinet decisions. If you were snowy white on this issue of principle, where is the move from you to expose your own cabinet deliberations? You are a phoney. You are a phoney. This phoney cause for exposure of public records is all right if it applies to everybody else except yourself. The same thing applies in many of the other positions that you take in relation to this place. You reinvent yourself to suit your own personal circumstances every time. So, Mr Moore, do not bleat to me and misrepresent our position in relation to the six years. We said six years prospectively. The issue here is whether it should be prospectively or retrospectively.

Mr Speaker, as I said, I have no particular fear at all about decisions that I was involved in in cabinet. I just think there is a principle here that is wrong. You are back-casting a decision, and, most importantly, back-casting it to avoid any exposure of most recent cabinets which have been involved in very controversial matters. If you are the people with the big white hats on at the moment and out there on your white chargers trying to convince people that you are on course to expose these public documents in the public interest, why not let us have a look at your own?

Now, I do not particularly support that principle. I am just talking about your principles. If you apply those principles to yourself, one would be more convinced that you were committed to the principle of accountability and openness. It is clear that you are only committed to the principle of accountability and openness if it applies to somebody else, and that is the case, particularly, in relation to yourself, Mr Moore.

Mr Speaker, I think the position that we have adopted is a fair one, six years prospectively so that everybody knows the rules of the game that they are getting themselves into. That is not a standard that is foreign to legislators and law-makers around this country, and it is not a principle that is foreign to the community. Prospective changes to laws and so on are routine, retrospective ones are not.

Mr Humphries: You have been in favour of retrospectivity for yourself in the past, Wayne, as I recall.

MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, it is true. Mr Humphries intervenes and says that I have moved some retrospective laws. Yes, to fix up mistakes of the government, and I will go to them now that he has intervened. Mr Humphries failed to act on a recommendation of the coroner to fix up some laws to enable people to be taken before the courts in relation

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