Page 2612 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 2 July 2008
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Mr Smyth: You haven’t given us the letters.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, you have already spoken.
MS GALLAGHER: So with respect to what the opposition is accusing the government of doing, we can equally come back and accuse you of doing it. You have put out information and you have run on information that suits the purposes of the argument and the scare campaign that you seek to run on this project.
Mr Smyth: No, we want the project.
MR SPEAKER: I warn you, Mr Smyth.
MS GALLAGHER: I have not quite worked out why the opposition has taken an objection to the Canberra technology city. Many Liberals have come up to me and said the same thing: they are uncertain why the Liberal opposition has taken a view which seems to be to want to run this project out of town and not support it. I think that is an unusual argument particularly for Mr Smyth, who has been calling for years for diversification of the ACT economy. When we have the single biggest opportunity to do that, the Liberals decide they are against it and want to run the project out of town. It seems to me that they will not be happy until they do so.
In relation to the documents, Mr Smyth did not indicate to the Assembly that many of those documents, as I understand it, that have not been released are subject to further processes. I imagine that many of them will be released once those processes are complete. I do not know how many, because the executive does not get involved in these decisions; it is improper to do so.
We regularly have FOIs in health. I think there is a standard one that goes every month. I do not see what the nature of that FOI is, and it would be improper for me to see it. I do not know whether the opposition understand that that is how this process works. It is completely at arm’s length from government. I might get some information around an FOI, but that occurs after the information has been made available to the opposition, and that is exactly what would have happened in this case. As I said, I think I was Acting Chief Minister—I am pretty sure I was—on the dates that the opposition must have received some of this information through FOI, and the first time I knew about it was when the Canberra Times journalist rang me and asked me a question about information that had been released to the opposition. That is the first time I knew about it, and that is quite proper.
I said to the journalist at the time, “Where is this coming from?” He said, “The opposition have had documents released under FOI.” I said, “Right, okay.” I rang to take advice before I answered some of the questions surrounding it, as it is not normally my area of responsibility. The department informed me that, yes, an FOI had been forwarded to the opposition. That is the first I knew about it, and that is right and proper—arm’s length from the process.
The other interesting angle that the opposition are running here is that they are accusing public servants of not doing their job properly; that is the argument. They are
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