Page 4697 - Week 12 - Thursday, 1 November 2018
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approved the acquisition but also on whether or not they considered the acquisition. There may be a circumstance where a minister or cabinet considered an acquisition but the acquisition was ultimately approved by a public servant in a directorate.
I think that is probably going to happen almost all the time: there is going to be a delegate who technically ticks off on the purchase, ticks off on the transfer of funds or actually signs the sale documents. Therefore, I think it is very important that we note whether the minister or cabinet was involved in the consideration of the acquisition.
I urge Ms Le Couteur, in particular, to support our amendment here. Failure to do so could give significant wriggle room for the government to not publish whether the cabinet or minister approved or were involved in these acquisitions.
We have also sought to include the date that cabinet considered the acquisition. This ties into the operation of the Freedom of Information Act and cabinet summaries being made available on open access information. We believe that these requirements are not administratively burdensome and will be both relevant and beneficial to include in any report on an acquisition.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (5.12): This was the last issue we worked on to try to settle between the parties, and basically we ran out of time. I think this is really unfortunate. Mr Coe started his bill, I think, in February this year. It is very disappointing that the ALP was not able to engage with it earlier so that we did not have this last-minute collection of amendments from all sides. We have had months to consider this motion. My office has worked constructively with Mr Coe’s office over this time.
This is disappointing. We are going to oppose this amendment, not because we oppose Mr Coe’s intent but because we were convinced that how it was written was potentially not going to do what was intended. I am sure that if we had an extra few hours, we could get this one sorted, probably in a way that all three parties would agree on. It is very unfortunate. My office and Mr Coe’s office were working on this until 2 o’clock today, and we could not come up with anything that did not appear to have unintended consequences.
I urge the government in the future to engage earlier with important bills like this. I think we can say that with something as important as this, the Assembly actually wants to get it right. Certainly the Greens want to get it right. We want to pass the best legislation for the ACT.
We appreciate in this instance that the government have accessed information that the crossbench and the backbench do not have, so their contribution is important and we listen to it. It is very disappointing that they made their contribution so late in the piece. Regretfully, we are not supporting Mr Coe’s amendment.
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella—Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Minister for Planning and Land Management, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister assisting the Chief Minister on Advanced Technology and Space Industries) (5.14): The government will not be supporting Mr Coe’s last-minute
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