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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Thursday, 26 August 2004) . . Page.. 4439 ..

MS DUNDAS (11.23): I thank Ms Tucker for having the foresight to get this debate adjourned. As I was looking at the Chief Minister’s amendments earlier this evening I was thinking that I had seen them before. Obviously, the ones tabled were different from the ones that I thought were going to be tabled. Under closer examination, there have been some very good arguments put forward.

We support the work that the Auditor-General does. There is concern that details of work that has been done, but which has not been released, could be leaked, but these amendments go a step further than just putting in legislation a provision that information should not be disclosed; they actually make it an intentional disclosure. So we do not give to anybody a duty of care to hold onto the information given to them by the Auditor-General. That needs to be readdressed.

As Ms Tucker has indicated, it means that we will be left with some clumsy wording in the original bill. But it is clear that we are trying to ensure that the intention is maintained; that is, that when the Auditor-General is seeking further information from somebody, that person is obliged not to disclose that information and that a person commits an offence if the person knows that a direction has been given asking them not to disclose it and that person discloses that information to someone else. As Ms Tucker said, we will need to revisit this issue in the next Assembly, but the fact that there is a bit of clumsy wording is not really a good enough excuse for taking this legislation one step away from where we want it to be.

Mr Smyth’s amendments to Mr Stanhope’s amendments negatived.

Question put:

That Mr Stanhope’s amendments Nos 1 to 3 be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

Amendments negatived.

Clause 13 agreed to.

Remainder of bill, by leave, taken as a whole and agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

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