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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2005 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

The argument that a sitting member should not have to experience their own decisions being put in a public gaze is not a very strong argument. Members ought to be able to explain why decisions were made. After at least 10 years those decisions would be sufficiently far in the past to be capable of being dispassionately examined while being put in the public arena for some context to be placed around them.

Mr Kaine suggested that cabinet submissions are presented by the public service. I take a very different perspective on that. Cabinet submissions are certainly prepared by public servants, but cabinet submissions have to be appropriated-intellectually, technically and legally-by the minister who presents them to cabinet. My view is that submissions should not be presented to my cabinet signed by anybody other than a minister. The minister puts a submission forward as his or her view and argues or supports that view in cabinet, except in very limited circumstances. I disagree with Mr Kaine about that issue. Public servants do not make submissions to cabinet. Ministers make submissions to cabinet.

Mr Hargreaves made an argument about the executive documents release process making it possible for the advice of public servants to be exposed in a way which may be detrimental to those public servants in the future. I will have to go back and examine Mr Moore's bill, but my recollection is that the bill deals with cabinet submissions. Cabinet submissions very rarely, if ever, identify public servants who are associated with preparing those submissions. Occasionally they do for reasons that are unavoidable. As a rule, the names of public servants do not appear on cabinet submissions. They are exclusively under the name of the minister. The name of the public servants who have been associated with them do not generally appear.

Mr Hargreaves: They do following an FOI trawl, though.

MR HUMPHRIES: FOI is independent of this process. If you can get the documents under FOI, you can get them now, not in six or 10 years time. I think FOI is immaterial. The question is executive documents. This deals with cabinet submissions, not anything else.

There are a few issues to deal with in the bill. I welcome the report of the standing committee and look forward to debating the bill later in the week.

MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, I seek leave to speak again very briefly on a point the Chief Minister made.

Leave granted.

MR HARGREAVES: The point I was making was not that cabinet submissions would identify people who have given advice, but rather that the list of those decisions becomes the tackle box in the fishing expedition. I urge caution, because the FOI process is usually about people who have an interest in a given subject and will then access documents according to their interest or their need.

People with mischievous intent will have a good look at the list of cabinet decisions and then decide to go for a fishing trip. It is at that point that I am urging the caution. It is at that point that the FOI trawling and the fishing trips-and we have all been subject to

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