Government Accountability

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (15:27): Today I want to raise the matter of secrecy within government and the impact that has on members of parliament, particularly those in the opposition. I wrote to minister Hunter some time ago at the request of the mayor of one of the councils in my electorate, the Tatiara council, who, following a motion passed by his counsel, sought a meeting with minister Hunter to discuss the matter of government policy with regard to the drainage system in the South-East. I wrote to the minister some months ago, and about a month later I got a letter back from him basically indicating that he was unwilling to meet with anyone on this matter.

The reality is that the minister wrote a letter, gave me a little bit of information in that letter, and said that he hoped that helped me answer the inquiry from my mayor. The mayor was not inquiring about any information from me, he was asking me to establish a meeting between him, as a representative of his council, and the minister to discuss an issue which was of great concern and importance to that council. I find it offensive that ministers of the Crown will not go out of their way to meet with a mayor of a local council where there is a matter of mutual interest.

In the reply he gave me—it was in regard to the community panel which was established in the South-East and the subsequent report it made on this particular matter—the minister said that he had given an undertaking to table that report in the parliament and give a response to it. Well, I can tell the house that that report was handed to the minister back in mid-March and he still has not tabled a copy in the house or the other place, and has still has not responded on behalf of the government. I think that, in itself, says more about that particular minister than the mayor or myself trying to establish a meeting on the mayor's behalf.

I was in Mount Gambier last week, and I had a number of issues I wanted to raise with a bureaucrat employed in the agency administered by that same minister. I rang the particular bureaucrat and said, 'Look, I've got several matters. I just wondered if I could come around to your office and you could walk me through how you make the decisions that you have made under the water allocation plan for the region.' I said, 'If you could walk me through it, it will help me respond to some of my constituents.' I told him of the issues that I had and we arranged for me to meet him at a particular time. Around 15 minutes before the appointed time, my office received a telephone call from the said bureaucrat, saying that he had been told that he was not to meet with me.

One of my colleagues raised a matter not dissimilar to this with Erma Ranieri, Commissioner for Public Sector Employment, earlier this year, and received a letter in February which, amongst other things, said, 'I have, as a result, updated my website to provide more accessible and explicit guidance to public servants receiving a request for information from members of parliament.' This is the relevant quote, which I am assuming is on the website:

Where a Member of Parliament makes an enquiry that is not a request for a briefing on major policies or legislation and does not relate to confidential matters, the correspondence should be facilitated in a timely and professional way per usual practice. That is, any information that would be provided to a member of the public should also be provided to Members of Parliament.

It makes it almost impossible for me and my colleagues to undertake work on behalf of our constituents if we cannot make simple inquiries to the bureaucracy so that we can ascertain on what basis they are making day-to-day decisions. How can we go back and explain those decisions to our constituents, and how can we advise our constituents as to what further action they may or may not be able to take?

I bring these matters to the attention of the house, and I call on the Premier to ensure that his ministers are apprised of the Commissioner for Public Sector Employment's advice to the opposition, because ministers are trying to be incredibly secretive. We saw it today in question time, where one minister said, 'I won't comment on a particular case,' notwithstanding that particular case has been all through the media. Good government relies on the free flow of information. Madam Deputy Speaker, yesterday—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member's time has expired.

Mr WILLIAMS: That is a great pity, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I know; for another day, perhaps.