Page 227 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 December 2008
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(iv) … matters relating to economic and business development, small business, tourism, market and regulatory form, public sector management, taxation and revenue and sustainability.
Pursuant to these responsibilities the Committee wishes to examine the Functional Review of the ACT Budget also referred to as the Costello Report. The committee believes that consideration of the Review clearly falls within its terms of reference.
Therefore the Committee requests that you provide it with a copy of the Review.
Yours sincerely
Dr Deb Foskey.
What was the Chief Minister’s response? Well, it was short and sweet:
Thank you for your letter of 19 … requesting a copy of the Functional Review …
As I have previously informed the Assembly, the Strategic and Functional Review of the ACT Public Sector and Services was prepared for Cabinet consideration.
He said, “We will not be releasing the document.” It was interesting, because when we got that, the PAC considered that. We thought about what had been written. Again, PAC wrote back. The public accounts committee wrote back to the Chief Minister, and if you have not read these letters then you need to see them and you need to read them. Dr Foskey, a Greens member, was the chair. I note that this morning someone referred to her as the courageous Dr Foskey. Yes, she did have courage because she stood by her convictions and she went after the things she knew to be wrong. She did not stop and she did not squib it and she did not hide behind agreements. I will read what Dr Foskey said in this letter, on behalf of the PAC:
Thank you for your letter of 2 April … in which you decline to provide the Committee with a copy of the Functional Review of the ACT Budget on the grounds that it is confidential to cabinet.
The Committee takes this as an assertion of public interest immunity on your part. Parliaments and their committees in Australia have traditionally found that public interest immunity claims, properly grounded, may be sufficient reason to decline to supply a document to a committee. The Committee does not believe that in this case your claim is properly grounded.
I draw to your attention the current approach to claims of public interest immunity based on cabinet confidentiality in Australian courts and in the … Senate. Both the courts—
and there is a reference to Odgers, and if you want to refer to Odgers, I can give you all the references if you want to read them and be informed—
and the Senate are clear that only documents that record or reveal cabinet deliberations are protected.
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