Page 2749 - Week 08 - Thursday, 11 August 2016
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There will be challenges but I think that my guys are up for the challenge and we are prepared to multi-task and do a number of things at the same time. The spirit of the legislation will be set today. Retraining can commence. If there is, as we think there may be, a necessity to come back, it will be tweaking at the edges. It will be technical stuff to ensure that the language is clear. We will not be changing the spirit of this legislation. Mr Corbell may wish to but he will not have the opportunity to do so, and I think that the lead time of almost a year to get this done is sufficient if we are serious about shedding light into the dark corners of bureaucracy.
Amendment agreed to.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Health, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Environment and Climate Change) (12.01): I seek leave to move amendments Nos 2 and 63 circulated in my name together.
Leave granted.
MR CORBELL: I move amendments Nos 2 and 63 circulated in my name together [see schedule 2 at page 2854]. They deal with interaction with other laws.
These amendments oppose clause 12 in the bill. Clause 12 states that the bill will override any secrecy provision in any other legislation. This clause is opposed by the government due to the potential impact across the statute book. The clause overrides information which has previously been deemed by the Assembly as too sensitive for public release. Secrecy provisions are included in legislation after considered advice and deliberation by this place, and these encompass Law Reform Commission reports, extensive engagement with internal and external agencies and consideration of Australia’s international obligations under certain United Nations treaties. It is not the place for freedom of information laws to arbitrarily override these integral policy decisions which the Assembly has previously agreed to in the making of these secrecy provisions.
Furthermore, there is often an existing scheme in place for access and protection of this information. A key example of this is the Children and Young People Act 2008. The act strikes a balance between information sharing between agencies and protecting sensitive information, which includes care and protection reporting information and information about child abuse or suspected abuse as well as family group conference reports.
The government opposes this provision as it does not provide an appropriate balance between access to government information and protection of sensitive and personal information of ordinary citizens.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (12.03): Clause 12 of the bill is important to the structure of the scheme. There is no need to remove it in order to include effectively exempt information covered by secrecy provisions which will be achieved by the government’s amendment No 51 that we will come to shortly.
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