STATE RECORDS

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood—Leader of the Opposition) (14:49): My question is to the Premier. If the office of the former education minister (the member for Cheltenham) did not fill out the Intention to Destroy Records Report (ITDRR), is it the case that all records, including the recipient of the email sent by Mr Simon Blewett, are still held by Telstra?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (14:49): Again, the question has the problem that I have tried to identify in previous answers in that there are certain assumptions contained within the question itself, those being about there being 'official records'. That is a moot point, and I do not wish to proceed answering the question without making the point that that itself is a question that is contentious.

As to the issue about Telstra, as the leader would know, there is a process by Telstra. I think the terminology used by Mr Ryan was that 'sample snapshots' of data are held within government agencies from time to time. That government data is held by Telstra for a period of time, and then later snapshots are taken. Whether that data constitutes an official record or not is indeed a different question, but yes, there is an involvement with Telstra; yes, they do hold the data for a period of time.

I think for the sake of completeness I should say that Mr Ryan advised us this morning that, in his view, that is not the best way of recording data, if indeed data is an official record, which is the question that is at the core of all of this. A better alternative would be, in the event of it being an official record, that hard copies were retained or a specific data management system, such as TRIM or one of the other systems that are around the place, be utilised as the repository for the material.