Page 2862 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 June 2011
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to reform the manner in which the Assembly satisfies itself that any document should not be produced, because our resolve is still strong. We still want to avoid the costly and lengthy legal battle, which is the alternative to some form of independent arbitration.
Given the government’s renewed commitment to openness, I would again draw their attention to a passage in the official New Zealand cabinet manual which reads:
In line with the philosophy of the Official Information Act 1982, the law relating to public interest immunity as a means of protecting government documents has moved significantly in favour of disclosure. Cabinet documents do not occupy any specially privileged position.
And this is the case in a number of parliaments. In the Welsh parliament, for instance, the cabinet does release a couple of weeks after the meeting was held, certainly, the decisions of the cabinet and the issues that were discussed in cabinet. And there are other examples around the world where this move to push that information out—again, just applying that public interest test, not what type of class the document is—is very much the rule that they are now going by. I invite the Chief Minister to confirm for the Assembly whether or not she shares this view and is committed to determine matters solely on the balance of which would serve the greater public interest.
So let me also take the opportunity to reiterate that at no point in any of the processes around the functional review did we criticise Sir Laurence Street, the independent arbiter, even though we have expressed a serious concern with the process and do disagree with the outcome.
I would like to make the additional point that given the government relied so extensively on the review for actions that were very controversial at the time, it is very unfortunate that the community did not have the opportunity to review the basis for the decisions that were made.
But going back, it was back in December 2008 that the issue of releasing the report arose for the first time here in the Seventh Assembly. And at that time we said that we would not support the motion to release it, that in the parliamentary agreement we clearly had an item that said that an independent arbiter needed to be set up. This was an independent umpire, independent of this parliament, who would be able to look at disputed documents around the issue of executive privilege and make that decision. So it was that in February we came back to talk about the document, and it was referred off to the arbiter. Of course, then that came back with a decision in May.
At the time we did say we were pleased that we would be setting up the independent arbiter, as it was about improving transparency in government. Of course we have taken that idea from a situation in New South Wales. It was modelled on the New South Wales Legislative Council reform following the Egan and Willis case. That was a dispute over some papers that ended up, I believe, in the High Court, costing several hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it was quite clearly recognised that that was just not the way to deal with disputes over papers. This was where this idea, this model, certainly within Australia, was first instituted.
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