Page 2266 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 August 2007
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MR SPEAKER: Resume your seat. That is a debating point, and you have got plenty of opportunity—
Mr Stanhope: No, I just want him to know.
MR SPEAKER: Well, you have plenty of time to debate the issue when it comes to your turn to speak, Chief Minister.
Mr Stanhope: I said the document was wrong.
MR SESELJA: If the Chief Minister is able to prove that the exchange there is as he said, of course I will withdraw, but I stand by what I said because he did yell that across the chamber. He is free to check the Hansard on that. But Mr Stanhope was interjecting on this issue, and he interjected, essentially saying, “Produce the document,” and this is the fundamental issue that we are talking about. We want the document; that is all we wanted. It is a document that is referred to in departmental documents. It is unfortunate if, when we put in an FOI request, we cannot rely on the veracity of what is in these documents. It is not referred to just once. It is referred to at least twice, so this phantom document, that apparently does not exist, is referred to twice. This is the problem. This is the fundamental issue.
Mr Stanhope’s sensitivity here reflects the fact that he is simply failing to provide the document that we asked for and he simply failed to provide sufficient answers to our questions on this. We can surmise as to why he would not have wanted to answer questions or produce documents on this. But it is apparently an area of real sensitivity. What we have from the freedom of information request was advice in relation to Kama. The advice said that this was to be solved and it referred to the valuation for this site. Mr Stanhope is free to ignore the advice, but it says in a departmental document that we received, under freedom of information, “I understand that Nic Manikis had put up a proposal not supporting the site for the health facility but the Chief Minister is determined to proceed.” That obviously reflects one thing: the Chief Minister is determined to proceed regardless of the advice. He is free to do that, but he clearly had a sensitivity on the issue that he was determined to proceed against the advice.
We simply asked for that advice. We asked for that advice during the estimates process and we did not get it. I understand, when this issue was taken on notice, eventually, we received a response, I believe from the Acting Chief Minister at the time, suggesting that because we had received documents under the Freedom of Information Act, and this had been an exempt document, and we had not challenged that decision, that somehow they should not have to give it up through the committee process. That is a ridiculous assertion. It is an absolutely ridiculous assertion that that has anything to do with it.
Regardless of whether they misunderstand the act or otherwise, the standing orders allow a committee to request documents, and it is incumbent upon the government to provide those, except in very limited circumstances, none of which were made out here. It is not a defence to say you did not challenge a freedom of information request
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