Page 462 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 4 March 2008
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Then there are ditto marks, so I presume that means 12.30 on Thursday. Then it says:
Ministerial letters
And down the side it has the numbers “60”, “140” and “10”.
Again one asks why this document was subject to a conclusive certificate. Why was the highest form of protection available under the Freedom of Information Act, never before used in the ACT, used for these two documents?
The third one, which is folio 02575, is a blank piece of paper with a box on it that has the word “Conclusion”. The only conclusion I can come to is that a conclusive certificate was issued on this because the word “Conclusion” was on it and they thought that there must be some relationship between them.
I call on the Minister for Education and Training to give an explanation to this Assembly by close of business tomorrow as to why these three documents ever received a conclusive certificate. The conclusive certificate on these documents is absolutely and completely fraudulent. The issuing of a conclusive certificate over these documents says that there are matters in this document which are so secret, so sensitive, that it is not in the public interest to release them. Mr Speaker, I ask you why an email that says “Chaps, get in your coordination comments” or a page with a box and the word “Conclusion” in it in any way meets the test of being in the public interest, of being deprived of permission for release under the Freedom of Information Act.
I put it to the minister that he should come in here and explain why his department issued a conclusive certificate over these documents. It might also be useful for the Chief Minister to explain why his department issued a conclusive certificate over document 02798, because that document was also subject to a conclusive certificate by the Chief Minister’s Department.
Ms Val Plumwood
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (6.04): I rise in the week of International Women’s Day to remember a friend of mine who died last week, someone whose death I learned about from the front page of the Canberra Times yesterday. Her contribution is very important and should be mentioned in this place.
Val Plumwood is someone that I had known for a couple of decades. We met through our mutual passion and concern for native forests. Val was a philosopher, a musician, an eco-feminist—a self-defined and a passionate environmentalist who put herself on the line.
Val lived near Braidwood and was a local identity. She lived on her own, in a stone house that she built in the bush on a property that she called “Plumwood”. Before she took the name Plumwood—because it is a particular tree on the property—she was known as Val Routley. She and her then husband, Richard Routley, wrote a book that
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