Page 1317 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 23 March 2010
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I thank very much Michael, who not only drove me around in the car but brought me back alive and in one piece. He was very cool, calm and collected. He did ask me if I wanted to go around again and I declined the offer. Nonetheless, I got to experience what it is to be in a rally car and I again say to the Brindabella Motor Sport Club that it was well done and I wish them well for the upcoming rally which is being held this weekend.
ACT Greens—policies
Freedom of information
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.50): On behalf of the Greens, I would like to convey our absolute flattery to Mrs Dunne that she has read our brochure so closely. We are very pleased that she has the spare time to get round to it. I would also like to let Mrs Dunne know that she has won the lucky prize of a chocolate frog—it is upstairs in my office and she can come and collect it—because she is the very first person to finally spot that we, rather unfortunately, did forget to put an authorisation on that. You would think that a political party that had been involved in so many election campaigns would not forget to do something like that, but—shock, horror!—we actually did and we confess that. We, of course, unfortunately, had to pulp and recycle the ones that had been printed without it, but I can assure Mrs Dunne that the new version does have it—and in fact I am prepared to even give you whatever flavour chocolate frog you would like.
I would like to pick up on your comment about the FOI reforms because I know that this is a point of consternation for the Liberal Party. Mr Smyth was quoted in the Canberra Times the other week sounding very concerned about this as well. It is always interesting to reflect on history some time down the path and I have strong recollections of it at the time—that the Greens actually had this policy to move on the issue of conclusive certificates as well. We intended to draft legislation; it had been our policy for some time. If I recall correctly, although I was overseas, Ms Foskey had this same position in the last Assembly.
When it came to early in this term, my office was about to issue instructions to parliamentary counsel to draft this legislation when it was brought to our attention that Mrs Dunne also intended bringing this on. Frankly, we sat there and said: “Well, we also note this is her policy. She has talked about this for some time.” I believe we actually even went down the corridor and had a conversation, when she said: “Fine. We were going to do it, but we are happy that you are doing it and we will support you.” So I do not think these things are about claiming it. We had the integrity to sit back and go: “She has already done the legislation. We will support it. We would have done it too.”
The statement actually says that the ACT now has new freedom of information laws. The Greens supported that; the government opposed it. It would not have happened if we were not here. That is the observation we were making.
One of the other interesting things I would like to comment on is that—
Ms Hunter: Cooperation.
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