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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (5 March) . . Page.. 506 ..
MR SMYTH (continuing):
instrumentality. If the Chief Minister wishes to continue with his pointless use of the PID Act, he can use section 3A to declare the McLeod inquiry a territory instrumentality and thus a proper authority.
Having, hopefully, managed to fill the gaps in the Chief Minister's knowledge with regard to public interest disclosure, let's move to defamation. Mr Speaker, I must confess that I am concerned at the naivete of our first law officer. His public comments on this issue of protection against defamation for witnesses are cloud cuckoo stuff. Does the Chief Minister seriously believe that people, if given this basic protection, are going to line up and maliciously defame our emergency services workers? Does he think that we are going to have some sort of Salem hysteria?
The simple fact of the matter is that in giving evidence before the McLeod inquiry as it is now a witness could easily and completely inadvertently defame someone. Someone could front up to the McLeod inquiry with no malice aforethought and tell the complete truth and then spend the next two years defending themselves in court. It may be that in this instance they could construct a valid defence and may well be successful, but at what cost?
In the fairyland that the Chief Minister inhabits this scenario is impossible. In his world, the only people who are sued for defamation are malicious evildoers who deserve everything they get. The real world is somewhat different. The real world is inhabited by volunteers like Mr Dutkiewicz, whom I quoted earlier.
Mr Speaker, you have to ask: is this why the United Firefighters Union were told that no public submissions were to be taken? I have a copy of a letter from Michael Bartlett, their solicitor, referring to the McLeod inquiry. It goes:
I am writing ... to bring to your attention concerns that the union holds about the format and procedure to be used in the McLeod Inquiry into the Operational Response to the January 2003 Bushfires.
Further on, the letter says:
On 3 March 2003-
Monday-
I contacted an officer from the McLeod Inquiry to obtain information about the format and procedure to be used at that inquiry. I spoke to a person called-
I will leave the person's name out of it-
She was kind enough to inform me that:
Written submissions could be sent to the inquiry;
There will be no public sessions where evidence is taken; and
Briefing sessions will be held with executive directors of relevant organisations.
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