Page 2613 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 2 July 2008
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accusing particularly staff in the Chief Minister’s Department. They are saying they have not applied the relevant sections of the FOI act. If you accept Mr Smyth’s argument, you accept this: that the Chief Minister became aware of the FOI; that he personally got involved; that he personally approved or declined information to be made available to the opposition; and that public servants allowed that to happen. That is the argument that the opposition are running, and it seems to be a very odd one, from an opposition that seek to become the government of this town and have these staff working for them, that they would seek to run this campaign against public servants.
They can sit there and say that is not what they are doing, but that is exactly the argument that Mr Smyth just ran. He was saying that FOI officers—officers trained and charged with applying freedom of information principles to freedom of information requests—inappropriately forwarded that information to the Chief Minister and then asked him, “Which of these documents would you like to release?” That is the ludicrous argument. It is unbelievable. You cannot prove it and you have got no evidence to support it. In essence, and apart from everything else that Mr Smyth belts on about, that is the argument that he is running. These public servants are highly trained, highly skilled professionals who would work for the government of the day, whoever it is. I expect that they would apply exactly the same principles regarding who is in government and who sought that information under FOI.
The opposition are alleging that these public servants went to the Chief Minister and personally asked him, “What should we release and what shouldn’t we? What are you comfortable with, Chief Minister?” And it is alleged that the Chief Minister said, “Well, leave it with me and I will approve some and I won’t approve others.” That is the most outrageous allegation, and I will wait to hear from Mr Seselja, because no doubt he is the big gun that is coming to support his deputy, so he will be able to prove all of this. But they will not be able to do it; they can’t do it. The comments I have made around supporting the government’s appropriate role in this process are ones that I stand by and ones that cannot be argued with.
I know the opposition have a different reading of this, but if they took the emotion out of it, read all the documents, did not selectively quote and drop things like “inappropriate conduct” or “inappropriate involvement” then they would see that the comments I made in the Canberra Times were true and correct and accurately reflected the record in terms of the information they had been given.
The government has been appropriately briefed on this project at all times. That is the appropriate role for government. It is a significant proposal and a significant project that potentially will occur here in the ACT. It is one which the government welcomes, but it is one which we have always said, right back to the beginning, needs to go through the appropriate processes, and that is what is occurring now. Under the health impact assessment, the government has sought further information and further work around the impact of this on the community. That is based on community concerns that have been raised through the independent statutory planning process, and that is appropriate.
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