Page 1398 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2011
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the government to the Assembly. It does not in any way suggest that the government is unwilling or unable to engage in the approaches that Ms Le Couteur is suggesting in her motion; it simply suggests that it requires further consideration before those steps are taken. I ask members to take that on board. The government cannot agree to act in the manner Ms Le Couteur suggests without properly examining all of the implications, and we believe that those issues should therefore be reflected in the motion. I commend the amendment to members.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (11.16): I wish to speak on the amendment here, Mr Speaker. I hear what Mr Corbell says about (d) of his amendment, exploring the copyright of all ACT government publications under creative commons licences. I think actually that one should not be a very worrying one because, clearly, if the ACT government does not have the copyright for something, it cannot be done. And if the ACT government has created the information and therefore has the copyright, and it is going to be published, why would it not be under creative commons?
This is not saying that every piece of government information should be published. This is only government publications, for which, I understand on the basis of an answer to a question on notice, the government’s stated policy is that it will allow fair dealing. So there is not a huge difference between fair dealing and creative commons licences. I think that this one is something that the government, given we are only talking about publications and not information in general, should in fact find it quite easy to agree to. This one is not a hard one.
I think that (e), saving all information in formats which have open standards, is possibly slightly harder due to the fact that we are using Microsoft for everything, but I believe that it is possible even with Microsoft to save things in open standards. Remember, of course, I am not saying that everything should be saved; I am saying “all information”, if you want to take the weasel word out of it. I think that this is in fact possible.
With (f), we just said “sponsor a competition” while the amendment has “explore the option of a competition” and I really think that it would be possible for the government to do it. As I have said, the commonwealth government has done it, and it has been done in the ACT although not under ACT sponsorship. That one is, I think, well within the ACT government’s means.
While these requests may be asking the government to move further than it would like to, it is not asking the government to move further than it actually can move and so the Greens will not support the government’s proposed amendment.
Question put:
That Mr Corbell’s amendment be agreed to.
The Assembly voted—
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