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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1889 ..

MRS DUNNE

three matters of contempt. That, Mr Speaker, is unprecedented, and it says a great deal about the culture and the malaise in this government and the contempt in which this government holds issues going to the nub of what is actually the responsibility of government.

This government, especially the Health Minister, remains forever tarnished by its failed attempt at denial of responsibility for the memo on how to undermine the estimates process. Many people who read it thought that it was a ripper wheeze, that it was a funny document. The main comment from most people was, "Yes, we've all thought it, but who would be stupid enough to write it?"

Yes, it is a stupid document. Yes, it goes to the very basis of how to undermine things and you do wonder why anyone had the wit to write it down. But it actually bespeaks arrogance that someone would go so far as to commit it to paper and then circulate it electronically to at least 20 or 30 people in the department of health that we know of, and we do not know how far it trickled down from there. It shows the contempt in which this government holds this Assembly and the processes of this Assembly.

The instruction sheet was published by officers of ACT Health to advise on so-called tactical approaches which could be adopted to avoid providing information to members of the Estimates Committee. This is, without a doubt, a contempt of this place-if not in the classic Erskine May sense, at least in the everyday sense of the common man. This avoiding of questions is clearly a contempt.

The instruction sheet advocates, for example, playing the blame game, which amounts to advice to flick questions to someone else, rather than telling the truth. It includes instructions on how to mislead. Nothing works better, it says, than pointing out that the area of concern or attack is, in fact, the fault or responsibility of someone else. There is a long list on that: the Commonwealth; the neglect of the previous government; the lack of services in the broader community; its being an Australia-wide problem; its being about wages and clinical costs; cross-border issues; and, of course, blaming the previous government. The committee members were seriously concerned at this attempt to undermine the purpose and effectiveness of the estimates process as it shows that at least sections of the executive are more intent on concealment than providing information to the parliament.

More serious than the document itself is the culture that it reflects. It reflects an attitude at the top which says that it is okay to pervert the estimates process. It says that it is okay to cover up, deflect, obscure, obfuscate and avoid providing information. It is acceptable to be smart and conniving, and this is symptomatic of a malaise that now permeates the entire government, from the Chief Minister down. It permeates down from the so-called leadership to functionaries whose behaviour otherwise would not be tolerated.

We saw that in a response by the chief executive of the Chief Minister's Department to the Public Accounts Committee in February of this year on a question about what programs would be forgone if all funding requested for bushfire recovery would not be provided. Instead of answering that reasonable and straightforward question and providing information in the spirit of openness and accountability which this government trumpets all the time, openness and accountability, do you know what he said? He said, "Work it out for yourself. Just work it out for yourself."

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