Page 2267 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 August 2007
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under which we suppressed that particular document under a particular provision. We constantly get documents under freedom of information where many documents are exempted. We do not have time to be challenging every one, but regardless, even if we do not challenge it, they are totally separate processes.
Mr Corbell interjecting–
MR SESELJA: The Attorney-General interjects. If he does not understand the law on this, maybe he should go and check it. The Freedom of Information Act operates separately from the standing orders, and the Attorney-General and the Chief Minister and the Acting Chief Minister should be aware of that. Clearly here, there was a point of embarrassment.
We referred to the documents we had; we took them at face value. We read from the documents that said, “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.” We asked for those documents, and that was referred to elsewhere, I understand, in the freedom of information request. So, if it is incorrect—it is referred to more than once—we simply cannot rely on what is being given to us. That is why we ask for the document.
We also have here the transcript in relation to the proposed auction for the site. I said to the Chief Minister, “They were going to auction it, though, weren’t they?” and Mr Stanhope responds, “No. Actually, you have been misled too, Mr Seselja.” He goes on to say, “It was not listed for sale. There was no impending auction or imminent auction, let alone was the land included in the land to be sold in the financial year.” But the documents tell us—we assume they are correct—that they were planning on auctioning it some six weeks after the time that those documents were produced.
So the Chief Minister on the one hand says that there is no impending auction, but on the other hand we have documents from the LDA that say there is going to be an auction in six weeks. If it was not listed for sale in that financial year, it is referred to in the documents as being prepared for sale six weeks hence—six weeks hence. This was the issue here. The issue here was he had his facts wrong on the auction, saying there was no imminent auction, when the documents contradicted that, and we also have the issue of not providing this proposal as referred to, this proposal that the Chief Minister now denies ever happened.
This is a serious issue. The response that came from the question on notice demonstrates a sensitivity here and it is the sort of thing that if the government was up-front about it and came clean with all the documents we would not have to have this argy-bargy over whether the documents are correct. We could judge for ourselves and we could take a look at it. It is disappointing that the Chief Minister has failed to provide those and failed to assist us in doing the proper job of an estimates committee.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Minister for the Environment, Water and Climate Change, Minister for the Arts) (9.10): I regret that I
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