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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3800 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

A range of initiatives outlined in both the bill and the amendments will make a significant advance in ensuring the government is appropriately open and transparent, that its contracting processes are public and that they are as public and as transparent as they should be. This is an area of government management of the business of government that has not been all that well handled. It is a difficulty that afflicts governments and administrations not just here in Canberra but all around Australia. The extent to which governments, bureaucracies or public services - in this instance, governments - rely in inappropriate circumstances on commercial - in - confidence clauses or make significant and inappropriate ambit claims about the supposed confidentiality of information, relying inappropriately on commercial - in - confidence clauses as a reason or justification for refusing to make information available to the public, when on any open or sober review of the information, particularly in retrospect, it is invariably revealed that there is absolutely nothing inherently confidential or commercially sensitive about the information, has been a perennial problem.

That is why we arrive at the position where three members of this place - namely, Mr Moore, Mr Osborne and I - each responded in our own way, and with slightly different schemes, to this real difficulty, not a perceived difficulty, of confusion around commercial - in - confidence and a belief that the government was not acting appropriately in all the circumstances, to extent that it did not have binding guidelines in relation to the use of commercial - in - confidence clauses or the release of information.

There were some quite notable and infamous examples of inappropriate reliance on confidentiality clauses or supposed commercial - in - confidence. One of the very stark examples was the rock concert that was to be held at Bruce Stadium but was cancelled. I pursued information on the rock concert and the costs the ACT taxpayer would be meeting in the commitment of the ACT. That was a legitimate effort by me to reveal the exposure of the ACT with its joint venture rock promoter partner. The government refused to reveal any information initially, on the basis that all the information was commercially sensitive and could not be released, despite the fact that a set of guidelines that ought to have been operation in the ACT government at the time set out explicitly the basis on which information would be regarded as confidential and the basis on which it would or would not be released. The arrangement in relation to BOPL was in direct contravention of the government's own guidelines.

That is part of the problem that we have had. A set of quite good guidelines issued by the then Chief Minister were observed only in the breach. The guidelines are consistently breached. Contracts entered into by the government do not reflect the positions of principle or policy that are set out in the guidelines.

The contract for the holding of the rock concert is a great example. It was entered into in stark breach of the Chief Minister's guidelines in relation to commercial - in - confidence clauses. Hence one of the difficulties. The government breached its own guidelines, entered into a contract and then relied on a contract in breach of its own guidelines as a reason for not releasing information.

The information was eventually released in a three or four - stage process. If one looks at that information now in all its bare glory, one sees that there is absolutely nothing sensitive about the information the government initially refused to release. The government refused to release information about the fact that it was proposing to pay

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