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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2307 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

to records", which talks of 20 years when I am talking of six years or somebody else is talking of 10 years. Had Mr Berry read the legislation before him he would have noticed that in the consistent legislation that is on the table, the Executive Documents Release Bill, the proposed section 7 on page 3, there is a later release day, and that is what is being referred to in terms of access to records, and that is the next 1 July after the end of the 20 years after the document submission day. It is exactly the same, Mr Speaker. They are consistent. They were designed to be consistent. So both of those arguments are simple furphies and should be dismissed out of hand.

So should his third argument, which was that this is terrible because this is not cabinet solidarity. I think most members are now used to what has been happening in the last three and bit years when there have been issues on which I have separated myself from the government. The other members remain with cabinet solidarity most times, but I have stepped aside. But there have been examples-

Mr Berry: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is "furphy" on the list?

MR MOORE: One of the examples, I think, which upset Mr Rugendyke somewhat, was the-

MR SPEAKER: No, I do not think so, but I will check it.

MR MOORE: "Furphy" is acceptable, Mr Speaker.

Mr Berry: "Furphy" is okay, is it?

MR SPEAKER: We had a very long debate on that.

MR MOORE: We had a very big debate on it when Mr Connolly, I think, used it and put a fantastic argument about furphy. He explained the origin of the word and the relationship with water tanks. I remember it quite well.

MR SPEAKER: That is correct.

MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, cabinet solidarity is completely irrelevant to this argument, as members know. Mr Rugendyke would remember when two members of Mrs Carnell's cabinet had a separate view from another three with regard to supervised injecting rooms. It is not an unusual move in this Assembly. They are the first three furphies.

The question that keeps coming through is why are they so uptight? Why are they so nervous when just recently they relented and said, "Yes, we should be releasing documents after six years"? That was when I said, "If you think it should be six years, that seems sensible to me. I have chosen 10." As Ms Tucker said, we are trying to work out what is the right time. I think most of us agree that cabinet decisions need to be confidential for a relatively short time, just the same as you tend to keep the preparation of bills confidential and not to table them or to make them public except in accordance with your own timing processes.

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