Page 2802 - Week 08 - Thursday, 11 August 2016
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section in that law enforcement and public safety should be under greater scrutiny, not less. The influence that it has on individuals’ lives is significant. It is all good and well to say that we care about individual rights when it comes to privacy but we are now potentially preventing action being taken to help protect individual liberty and other protected individual rights.
Agencies involved in this work should be subject to public scrutiny. The fact that we debate these sorts of issues so often in this place demonstrates the significance of the public interest at stake. We should not be preventing ourselves from having a proper and informed debate about these issues. Again, this is not carte blanche. It is about having the scope to examine whether it is in the public interest. We certainly do not want carte blanche to say we cannot examine these issues. That is what the passing of this amendment will achieve.
Amendment agreed to.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Health, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Environment and Climate Change) (5.00): I move amendment No 65 circulated in my name [see schedule 2 at page 2854].
This final government amendment amends clause 4.40(2) to provide that where the director makes a declaration under section 28 of the Territory Records Act, applying provisions of the FOI Act to a record, they may do so if the disclosure would or could reasonably be expected to be a contempt of court or the Assembly or if the record would be subject to legal professional privilege.
The amendment assists in providing the balance needed in the bill between promoting open and accessible government and protecting particularly sensitive information and the efficient workings of government. It also reinstates the current practice under the Territory Records Act and aligns with the more robust protection for legal professional privilege, which has been dealt with by amendment 49, and the protection for court and Legislative Assembly process already provided by clause 1.1 of schedule 1 of the bill.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.01): The Canberra Liberals will be supporting amendment 65. Again, this is an area where I think practice might lead to innovation later in the day. The caveat is that this applies the Territory Records Act to a range of information. Although I have been very keen to ensure that there has been protection of legal professional privilege, we are now imposing a 20-year blanket ban on anything that has legal professional privilege attached to it. We may in the future decide that that is too great a time, but at this stage—again taking a more conservative approach—I am happy to support this amendment.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.03): Colleagues will not be surprised to discover that I do not support this amendment. Similar to my earlier comments about legal professional privilege, this is now amplified in the sense that we are now talking 20 years later. I think any public interest that exists in protecting this information 20 years after it was produced is significantly diminished. It is an extended period of
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