Page 1755 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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obtain redress under the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act. That has not occurred without considerable interference from the government—firstly in seeking a quite high security order to the tune of $50,000. The government hoped that by asking them for $50,000 they would fall by the wayside—as was the case with the Cook community, which found that they could not raise that sum of money; their case in the Supreme Court has fallen by the wayside. At the last moment the money for Flynn was brought together. Last Friday’s attempt by the Stanhope government to strike out the Flynn community’s matter failed. For the time being at least, there is some hope that the matter is still alive.
But we now get to the terrible issue of discovery, which is not a right in these sorts of civil cases. The community has been told in no uncertain terms that the territory will be engaging and retaining senior counsel to manage the matter and to resist all attempts for discovery by the Flynn community. That means that, for the Flynn community to be on an equal footing, they themselves are going to have to go out and find senior counsel to confront the government senior counsel.
What we have here is the government using its relatively limitless resources to grind down a community group that only wants answers. It only wants answers. The relentless pursuit of the Flynn community is a disgrace—a complete disgrace—and shows the lengths to which this government will go to obfuscate, to avoid openness, to avoid accountability and to avoid taking to the people of the ACT the reasoning for its decisions.
As a consequence, we have to look at some other fairly pathetic actions by the department of education. The most recent was the attempt by the council for civil liberties just to put some of this out in the public domain. The council for civil liberties approached me and said, “Mrs Dunne, this is a very interesting case that you have. Can we put on our web page your statement of facts and contentions given to the AAT after it became a public document in open court?” I said yes. They asked the other respondent, Ms Barden, whether that was all right with her. They said yes. They thought they had better ask the department of education, for the sake of completeness. The department of education’s statement of facts and contentions is a full page and half, but to this day the department has refused to release to the council of civil liberties a document which has been released in open court.
Why is the council of civil liberties now in the situation where it cannot obtain this document under the Freedom of Information Act because of legal professional privilege—a document released in open court? It is now itself at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, trying to obtain this document, which I now seek to table and have incorporated in Hansard.
Leave granted.
MRS DUNNE: Thank you. I table the following paper:
Respondent’s revised statement of facts and contentions—copy of affidavit concerning Mrs Dunne and the ACT Department of Education and Training, dated 20 February 2007.
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