Page 663 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 11 February 2009
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The incoming government brief provides that opportunity to highlight those issues. It should be done in a forum and context where there is confidentiality so that all the options, even ones that are politically difficult, are politically unacceptable or contentious, are open to consideration. Good decision making requires that all information is on the table. If such information is made available, particularly before a decision is even made—for example, if the incoming government briefs are requested under FOI immediately following a change of government—then the ability to make the decisions is itself compromised.
Imagine the circumstance where there is a change of government; an incoming government brief is provided to a minister; at the same time the outgoing government, the new opposition, requests an incoming government brief, gets that and uses that to highlight politically unacceptable options open to the new government before a decision has even been able to be made on a difficult issue. That really does compromise effective governance and good decision making.
These are the types of issues that are at play, and that is only one example of many I could cite as to why it is important to provide appropriate confidentiality to this limited form of documents. Again, these are limited in their scope. We are basically talking about three folders that are made available to a minister over their time as a minister: the incoming government brief, question time brief, the brief for an estimates or annual reports hearing. Those are the three at play.
This is not a wide exemption; this is not a sweeping exemption; but it is an important one to ensure effective governance and to ensure that ministers are in a position to properly consider all issues and account to parliament through the Assembly and its committees for their actions. For those reasons, the government believes this change is an important one and moves the amendment accordingly.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.22): The opposition will be opposing these even more vehemently than the previous proposals. This is a fairly outrageous closing of the doors in relation to practice and form in this territory. It is interesting that the attorney, in his presentation comments, admitted that even his party had at times participated in the requesting of these documents and I think he did admit, albeit grudgingly, that so far the sky had not fallen in.
But suddenly things are important. This is so important that, without consultation in the community, without broader discussion in the community and I suspect without much advice from his department—I would like to see that advice, actually—the minister wants to go down this path and wants to insert it into the Canberra Liberals’ bill, to somehow get some ownership of the reforms around the place.
This is not reform. This has been proposed without consultation, hung on the fact that in the very large Solomon inquiry there is a page or so that refers to this. The Solomon inquiry is, generally speaking, a fairly comprehensive piece of work which addresses its terms of reference, which were terms of reference commissioned by the Queensland government, not by the Queensland parliament. They were to go along and make some FOI reforms but at the same time protect the government.
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