Page 5737 - Week 13 - Thursday, 18 November 2010

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We have talked a lot about ACTION, ACTION timetables and the impossibility of finding out those crucial records for everyday life. I do urge the government to take on board using Google Transit, but before that, to take on board simply printing enough paper records of bus timetables, as I have had complaints from people about this.

The commonwealth government has done a lot of work on Gov 2.0 and recently announced that it is going to make “creative commons” the default licence for information published by the commonwealth government. The commonwealth has also said that the default will be one of the more permissive creative commons licences, the CC-BY, which allows complete freedom to reproduce and remix, subject only to acknowledgement of the original source.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics is the first national statistical office in the world to make the entire census dataset available online in an interactive way using CDATA. And here in the Assembly we are also leaders with Daily on Demand. This is at the forefront of Australian parliaments and puts the Assembly, in fact, at the forefront of world legislatures in making parliamentary procedures more accessible in a timely way, and very nicely done by leveraging existing Hansard technology.

Gov 2.0, though, can be more than just the provision of general information. There can be protocols so that individuals can obtain the information that the government has about them more easily, and that is really important. Individuals should be able to know what the government has on them, basically. Gov 2.0 can also facilitate citizens, community groups and business interaction with government. It can allow crowd sourcing of ideas and two-way or more conversations. It facilitates interaction and feedback.

I also note the Auditor-General’s recent report on how the government currently handles these issues of feedback and complaints and the Auditor-General’s comments about the need for improvement. The “fix my street” initiative launched by the government this year is an example of this. “Fix my street” mimics a Canadian program, also called “fix my street”. I would love to see the ACT government do more along these lines.

Returning to the records management act, as I said, the Greens will support the changes it makes. They are useful amendments to the Territory Records Act, based on the findings of the independent review of the act. Again, I appreciate that the government has responded in a good way to the recommendations of the scrutiny of bills committee. These amendments have been circulated to all parties and I believe we are all in agreement. I am happy that we take these amendments and the bill as a whole.

MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Land and Property Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (5.32), in reply: I thank members for their contribution to the debate and for their expressions of support. The


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