Page 651 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 11 February 2009
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should not be looking to constantly expand the realm of secrecy. We should keep it to what genuinely needs to be protected—things such as national security documentation, to use one example. It should not be used as a way to suppress documents unreasonably; it should not be used as a way to deny information to the public.
I am very pleased to support Mrs Dunne’s legislation. We believe that the legislation put forward by Simon Corbell simply seeks to muddy the waters further and provide exemptions that are not reasonable or necessary. We will be voting for Mrs Dunne’s legislation. I commend her for it. I commend her for the work that she has done over a long period of time—not just in legislative reform in this area but also in tenaciously seeking information from the government. From that tenacity, during that school closure process, along with the community, we were able to get a bit of an insight into the way this government treats information, the way this government treats documentation and the way this government and this minister for education have cynically manipulated the Freedom of Information Act for their own political purposes. I commend Mrs Dunne for the bill. I commend her for her work. We look forward to the passage of this legislation.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (3.30), in reply: I thank members for their contribution. I particularly want to thank the Leader of the Opposition for his kind words. The Freedom of Information Amendment Bill begins the much-needed process of reform in the ACT. It opens the way for a level of transparency to be restored to the people of the ACT and it honours an election commitment of the Canberra Liberals.
When I presented this bill to the Assembly in December last year, I acknowledged the Greens and their support. I take this opportunity to thank the Greens once again for their support and to acknowledge that there was a very similar bill drafted by Mr Rattenbury. He gave way graciously, and without my asking, to the Canberra Liberals in recognition of our prior commitment in this area. I take the opportunity to acknowledge that graciousness again. I am glad that the Greens have joined with the longstanding battle taken up by the Canberra Liberals and have so wholeheartedly supported the Canberra Liberals in their pursuit of this reform.
Earlier today, the Attorney-General made comments about the two bills that we are debating today, the Canberra Liberals’ bill and the government’s bill, saying that they were similar. That is definitely not the case. The opposition’s bill goes to making public access to government information more available and to opening the way for FOI reform. The government’s bill—while mirroring some of my reforms, but not all of them—also goes to tightening up the restrictions to public access. It goes to the trouble of creating whole new classes of documents to which the public would be denied access on a regular basis. These classes of documents would not even be subject to consideration under the act, and an FOI officer would not be able to give a member of the public access to these documents. They could not even be considered as part of the FOI request. These are Simon Corbell’s reforms.
It is interesting to note—it was touched on by Mr Seselja in his comments—that the previous attempt at reforms by Mr Corbell as Attorney-General also resulted in the tightening up of provisions in the FOI Act to make it harder for members of the public to gain access to the community. Not only were there changes to section 7, as pointed
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