Page 827 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 2 May 2007
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MR STEFANIAK: Thanks, Mr Speaker. I do not think the Chief Minister has actually answered the first part, which I would like him to do. The supplementary is this: Chief Minister, why are your departments unable to provide information as to their expenditure through existing accounting systems?
MR STANHOPE: They are not unable to do that.
Mrs Dunne: So they choose not to?
MR STANHOPE: They do.
Mr Smyth: So they broke the FOI law?
MR STANHOPE: No. They have provided information. The answer to the question is that, if they are able to provide that information, they will. It needs to be understood that the government has not yet responded to this particular report. It is a report that was delivered in February.
Mrs Dunne: This is the Canberra Times. We are not talking about the Auditor-General.
MR STANHOPE: So this is the crime; this is the sin—that departments did not respond according to a Canberra Times timetable. I understand! I misunderstood.
Opposition members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR STANHOPE: So the question is: why didn’t ACT government departments respond to the Canberra Times according to the timeline set by the Canberra Times? Oh, well, goodness me; what a sin! What a shocking sin of governance! What a shocking sin of omission!
Opposition members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order! Chief Minister, that was not the question. Members of the opposition should cease interjecting. If the Chief Minister wishes to, he can come to the subject matter.
Mrs Dunne: If he wishes to? That is a new standard.
MR SPEAKER: Take no notice of the interjections.
MR STANHOPE: I misunderstood the question, Mr Speaker. I beg your pardon. I thought the question was: why didn’t ACT government departments respond through some official process to a request for information? From the expansion that we now have on the question, I understand that the sin that is behind the question is that the ACT government, through its departments, did not respond to a journalist in accordance with his timelines in terms of meeting the deadline for the submission of an article.
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