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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2304 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

We do not want to accept this principle that there will not be access to cabinet documents at some point in time, that is, after 30 years." That opportunity was never taken.

The assumption would be, I suggest, that this is more of an anomaly, or something that was overlooked, and it was never put into ACT legislation. Therefore, anybody who has been involved in any cabinet discussion should have been under the understanding that whatever happened eventually would be open to the public. I would hope that was the case, because for me it is a fairly fundamental tenet of democracy and accountability of governance.

The debate that we are having today is around three key points. One is the retrospective issue, which I will refer to again in my speech. Another is what period of time, six years or 10 years. There is also the question of the Territory Records Bill.

I do not think this is a fantastic process. I did not support Labor's attempt to adjourn this debate because it is fairly easy to see the access to records clause in this Territory Records Bill, and it says:

A record of an agency is open to public access under this Act if 20 years has elapsed since the record, or the original of which it is a copy, came into existence.

That actually is not inconsistent with what we are debating today.

What we are debating today is an attempt by Mr Moore to make it a shorter period of time for cabinet documents with particular protection, so I do not have a problem in debating this issue today for that reason.

This bill requires the release of ACT Government cabinet papers after six years. Mr Humphries wants to amend it to 10 years. The papers would be released as an annual batch with the entire year's papers released on 11 May in the 11th year after the production of the papers. It appears that this bill is modelled on the federal system where cabinet papers are released with a flourish by Australian Archives after 30 years on 1 January each year. This has become an annual ritual. We are probably all aware of the extensive media stories on past cabinet papers that appear at this time of the year as the release of the papers gives the media some stories in an otherwise slow news time.

I do not think anyone here would argue against the release of these types of documents. These documents define the key decisions of the government and are of significant historical interest, as well as ensuring that governments can never assume that their decision-making processes can be hidden from the public forever. It is an integral part of our democratic system.

The issue here today is how this release should occur. The longer we leave the release of these documents, the more they become an historical curiosity rather than being relevant to today's society. However, if we release these documents too early it could threaten the capacity of cabinet to make its decisions in private and on their own terms. The release of cabinet documents too early could also unintentionally provide political ammunition against those politicians who were involved in those decisions and are still in the Assembly.

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