Page 2640 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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MR SPEAKER: Just one moment, Mr Smyth. Ms Gallagher still has the floor.
MS GALLAGHER: I have completed my answer.
MR SPEAKER: Ms Le Couteur, are you after a supplementary?
Ms Le Couteur: I was after a supplementary but I thought Ms Gallagher had the floor.
MR SPEAKER: Yes, Ms Le Couteur had the call earlier, Mr Smyth.
Mr Smyth: She needs to be on her feet, Mr Speaker. You just can’t ask a member if they had a supplementary. The practice in this place is that people get to their feet and say “supplementary”. They are your standing orders.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Thank you, Mr Smyth. For what it is worth, Mr Hanson and Ms Le Couteur stood at the same time before and I was going to take it that way, but now that you have the floor, Mr Smyth, it is yours.
MR SMYTH: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Chief Minister, a supplementary: in this spirit of openness and accountability, would you now table the Costello report, the secret report on bullying in obstetrics, and the Enlighten report that you have withheld due to commercial-in-confidence reasons?
MS GALLAGHER: Indeed, in the comments I have made around open government and the release of government information, I have also outlined areas where there would be reason, and could be valid reason, for certain reports or certain parts of reports not being able to be released. Some of those issues go to commercial-in-confidence. As I understand it, that is the reason around some of the withholding of Enlighten information. I also said last week that we would be reviewing government contracts to make sure that when we engage consultants we will make it clear to them that the default position will be that this information will be released to the community unless there is a valid reason for it not to be.
In relation to the Enlighten festival and the reviews that will come post 1 July and when this open government framework is implemented, it will be made very clear to consultants that this is the environment they are working in. That was not the case with the Enlighten review. So I think it is important that we let consultants know the rules of engagement with the ACT government.
Mr Smyth: Your government said you wouldn’t hide behind commercial-in-confidence, yet you do all the time.
MS GALLAGHER: Mr Smyth, if you would let me finish. You asked me three elements in that question. The second report you mentioned was into allegations of bullying and harassment in the obstetrics unit at the Canberra Hospital. As Mr Smyth knows, in order to table that report I would have to break the law. And I am not going to do that. I would have to break the law and I am not going to do that. I also know that if the opposition have a problem with the Public Interest Disclosure Act they have
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