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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 7 Hansard (6 June) . . Page.. 2061 ..

MR WOOD (Minister for Urban Services and Minister for the Arts) (5.21), in reply: Mr Speaker, let me bring another member into this-Mr Stefaniak. I want to refer to a couple of incidents, on the arrival of Mr Stefaniak into the position of Minister for Education, and on his departure 61/2 years later.

I was the former minister. When Mr Stefaniak took up his office, he moved upstairs and I moved downstairs. I received a fax from the education department to the new minister. It came through on my fax machine. They had pressed the wrong numbers-or something had happened. What did my senior staffer do? They immediately told Mr Stefaniak's office that we had something that was intended for him, and it was fixed.

Coincidentally, when Mr Stefaniak left the office, in the next couple of days, we got something on our printer downstairs that his staffer had punched out to print. It came on to my machine. What did my senior staffer do? They straightaway got on to Mr Stefaniak's office to say: there is a problem here which has to be fixed. Is that not the honourable thing to do? Is that not the ethical and proper thing to do?

Mr Humphries: That does generally happen, in those circumstances.

MR WOOD: Yes-I absolutely agree with you, Mr Humphries. It generally does happen in these circumstances.

Mr Humphries: This one was a different case, though.

MR WOOD: Is it now? I do not know.

Let me put the most sympathetic lean on this situation. I will accept that, inadvertently, certain emails started to appear on the machine of a staffer in Mr Humphries' office. The honourable thing would have been-as we did-to say, "Hey, Bill, we've got a problem here."

In fact, they were downloaded, and they were filed. However many there were, over a period of a month, or perhaps more-but let us settle for a month-they were downloaded and they were filed. Nobody told me, and nobody told the constituents or, indeed, one of my staffers who had punched in the wrong thing, that that was happening.

What do you think is the honourable and ethical thing to have occurred in that circumstance? What do you reckon? I know what they reckon. They reckon this is a witch-hunt-cheap and tacky. That is what they reckon. No, it is not. It was improper behaviour, in any circumstances-absolutely improper.

Mr Humphries: Was it a breach of privilege? That is the question.

MR WOOD: We are going to find that out, Mr Humphries. We are going to find that out-that is what this is about. The opposition wants to divert it and attack the leader of the government: "You, Mr Stanhope, had this witch-hunt, you went out to nail a staffer."

Mr Stanhope had nothing to do with it. That came out of the officialdom of this Assembly. That is how it came about-as it had to. Let us stop the histrionics and the evasion. It is proper to look at this.

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