Page 424 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 13 March 2007
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never been the practice of any executive government in this territory to release documents which are cabinet-in-confidence.
Equally, the changes that the government is putting in place revolve around the protection of information provided to the territory which may be sensitive in terms of its security or intelligence content. That is a loophole that we do need, as a territory, to address. We do need to make sure that, when information is shared with us by the commonwealth government around matters to do with the safety and security of our community and that information comes from ASIO, the Australian Federal Police or other sources, it is given an appropriate level of protection.
If we fail to do that, we will not be in a position to receive that information, and the territory and the community will be the worse off for that. We will not be in a better situation if we are not able to be confided in when it comes to matters that may affect the safety and security of our citizens and plan appropriately for possible threats. That is what these changes are fundamentally about, Mr Speaker, and that should not be forgotten in the broader critique that Dr Foskey has launched again this morning in this regard. These amendments address a range of matters dealt with by the scrutiny of bills committee. They are a response to the matters raised by the scrutiny of bills committee and they quite properly seek to clarify the questions that the scrutiny of bills committee asked.
Finally, I draw attention to the issue of the use of conclusive certificates under section 37A of the act. The decision as to whether a document exists and whether such a document would be an exempt document under the relevant sections of the act is the matter of which the AAT may have oversight. That, quite properly, protects the integrity of that document, because we are talking about documents that are provided in confidence to the territory for the purposes of community safety. The AAT is able to determine whether it was reasonable to conclude that the document was an exempt document.
The check in this regard is that, if the minister continues to issue conclusive documents in these circumstances, the minister must do so in the Assembly and needs to provide justification for his or her decision. So there is significant pressure in a political sense on the minister to continue to justify his or her decision, and to do so in the face of an AAT examination of certain matters. That is, I think, a reasonable balancing of the need to protect the integrity of certain information that is received whilst at the same time providing for an appropriate level of scrutiny and the need for ministers to justify their decisions publicly. I think that is a reasonable balance to be had in this regard. I commend the amendments to the Assembly.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (10.51): Mr Speaker, the minister sounds superficially quite convincing, but we have to remember that what he is proposing is a vast improvement—I have to congratulate the minister—in the way certificates would operate in relation to section 37 of the Freedom of the Information Act, but not how they operate in relation to sections 35 or 36. Sections 35 and 36 are the contentious ones at the moment where there are no checks and balances. What has happened in this territory is, essentially, that the chief executives of organisations have said that the AAT does not have the competence to hear these matters.
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