Page 352 - Week 02 - Thursday, 8 March 2007
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I suppose, like all of these things, freedom of information, openness and accountability, are things that one likes to talk about in opposition, but when one gets into government one fails at the first test. We heard all through 2001 the now Chief Minister giving heart-rending speeches about openness and accountability and about how a Stanhope Labor government would not stand behind confidentiality clauses and would not use the Freedom of Information Act to prevent people’s access to information. But, as Dr Foskey has said here today, what we now have in the ACT is a freedom from information act.
We know that we have reached considerable lows in the treatment that I have received in my attempts to obtain information in relation to school closures. I have asserted, and I do not think that anyone has corrected me on this, that this is the first time that anyone in the ACT has issued a conclusive certificate in relation to documents sought under the Freedom of Information Act. I checked with a couple of former attorneys-general, neither of whom could recall it happening in the past. In the time that I have worked in this place for attorneys-general, I cannot recall it happening. But, over the issue of school closures, we now have two sets of conclusive certificates in relation to a substantial number of documents.
Dr Foskey has already taken my words, but I will repeat them. What it actually shows is that this government does not trust an eminent jurist like Mr Michael Peedom, the president of the AAT, to make—
Mr Mulcahy: The government has given it away. There is no-one here.
MRS DUNNE: There is no-one here. There is a lot of information getting in here, but none of it is getting to the government because there is no-one here to listen. The real issue is that what the government is saying is that it does not trust the president of the tribunal, a longstanding lawyer in this town of considerable status, to make a decision on the merits of the case. So what we have is a process which is really a freedom from information process.
The application of conclusive certificates in relation to documents that relate to school closures is an absolute travesty of everything that Jon Stanhope said in 2001 that he stood for. Jon Stanhope was then saying, “I am Mr Openness and Accountability. My commitments as a civil libertarian are to openness and accountability.” What do we have today? (Quorum formed.) What we have in the operation of this government, and in the operation in relation to school closures, is complete fleeing from the commitments of the Stanhope government—the general commitments made by Jon Stanhope before he became Chief Minister—and the specific commitments made in this place by the minister for education, Andrew Barr, about being open about the decisions made about school closures. “I will reveal everything. Everything will be open for discussion.” Mr Barr said words to that effect over and over again in this place. When it actually came to the crunch, they were not as good as their word.
When it became an issue, when parents and I decided to pursue the government and to find out why they made these decisions and how they came to this process, what did we have? We had 150-odd documents being subject to a conclusive certificate. That is not openness and accountability. Really, it has got to the stage where we have
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