Page 5706 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 6 December 2011
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scribblings on them that would make them private notes. Therefore, within the context of 213, it is entirely appropriate to ask for those notes.
The purpose of this standing order is particularly for when a minister has access to information that the rest of us do not, so that we can verify that what the minister is saying is absolutely true. We have all been here, particularly when the previous Chief Minister, Mr Stanhope, was here, when he would read a single line out of a bit of legal advice that would suit his purpose, but on either side of it might be information that would change entirely the perception of what was being said.
The point here is that the Chief Minister, in her defence of the questions the opposition have asked, is not referring to the bulletin on hospital figures that was released last week or the week before; she is now quoting from figures that she has for the following months—so not the September figures but the October figures—that we do not have access to. If we want to verify what we are being told is correct then it is more than appropriate to ask for the document to be passed to the Assembly under standing order 213. It is what it was designed for.
The Chief Minister’s rebuttal of Mr Hanson’s question is “I’ve got later data”. But if you have got later data and you are sure of the accuracy of the data then you should table it. If you are not sure of the accuracy of the data, you should not use it. So the Chief Minister has put herself into a dilemma that I believe actually contradicts the ministerial code of conduct, where it says, “Ministers should take all efforts to make sure that the information that they present to the Assembly is accurate when they present it.” It is not a matter of saying, “When we verify it later on in a process and choose whether or not to release that information.”
So the Chief Minister has this bastion of “I’ve got data” that she builds around herself to construct this castle of credit, as it were, to say, “Oh, you’re all wrong because you’re out of date, but by the way, I’m not going to share the data with you because the data—
Ms Gallagher: That’s not what I said.
MR SMYTH: Well, you have just said you will not table the document. So are you withdrawing that; you are going to table it now? So the Chief Minister contradicts herself again, Mr Speaker. And this is the dilemma for the Assembly. This is why this standing order was put in place. This is why this document should be tabled and we should not actually be having this debate at all. If you are going to come into this place and quote data that there is doubt over, when its reliability has not been guaranteed, when it has not been verified, you cannot use it as a defence and say, “Oh, I’ll get it to you later.” If you are going to use that data as a defence, you have to be willing to table it, because this place holds the ministry to account. This place, on behalf of the people of the ACT, is entitled to ask the questions that check whether you are doing your job properly.
I have to say, Mr Speaker, that over the last 10 years of Labor government, particularly the last almost six years that this minister has been the Minister for Health,
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