Page 876 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 2 May 2007
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Let us look at some of the other elements of the Stanhope government’s approach to good government. This is the one that I really like—and Dr Foskey has touched on this. He said:
Labor rejects the corruption, for instance, of the Freedom of Information process that has characterised the Carnell-Humphries governments …
He talked about the corruption of the freedom of information process, and today he talked here about how he, as a member, could not obtain documents in relation to Bruce Stadium under the Freedom of Information Act. As a staff member, I saw the documents—the boxes and boxes of documents—that went out to Jon Stanhope’s office. We were given lists of the documents. We know the extent of the documents. He received bucketloads of documents—truckloads of documents. If he could not make his way through them, that is another thing. There were some things that were exempt, but on no occasion did we find the Carnell-Humphries government issuing conclusive certificates over documents relating to Bruce Stadium. But we do here under the Stanhope government—the Stanhope government that would not play that “ridiculous game”, as he called it. He said:
Labor will ensure that the operation of the Freedom of Information Act is centrally monitored, that all decision-makers are appropriately trained, and that the emphasis is on disclosure rather than secrecy.
Remember: “the emphasis is on disclosure rather than secrecy”. Then I look at the parents groups, the individual parents, and I, who have attempted to obtain information in relation to school closures, and what has happened? Those parents, when it comes to the crucial documents, have had conclusive certificates slapped on those documents so that they cannot progress the matter. What this says is that this Chief Minister, who was going to have central scrutiny of freedom of information, does not trust the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in the ACT to determine something on its merits and is trying to take it out of the capacity of the AAT. This is because this government has something to hide—in the same way as this government has something to hide about corporate credit cards.
It is most interesting that agencies were approached by the Canberra Times and asked whether they could account for how much they spent on credit cards and by other means in relation to corporate hospitality, going to conferences and travel, and one of those agencies that could not, or would not, answer that question was the department of education. I suspect that every parent of every child whose school closed last year, and who got shonky information about why that school should close, has their blood boiling when they realise that the organisation that closed their schools to make spurious savings cannot account for its hospitality and cannot account for the conferences that it attends.
This is why the opposition are bringing this matter, this important matter, in front of the Assembly today and in front of the people of the ACT. The Stanhope government fails its own test. The speech that Jon Stanhope made in February 2001 is a hollow speech because in April 2007 he has failed to live up to anything in it. If that is the model that people in the ACT should—
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