Cabinet Documents

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:05): To the Premier: given that the Auditor-General has given evidence to a committee of this parliament that after the September determination of cabinet they would change the rules in respect of access to cabinet material—that is, documents prepared for cabinet—which he has reported to in his annual report, and received a visit from the Attorney-General to explain to him what was going to happen, what was the basis for actually changing the rules, which you say is going to attend to the timely release of material?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (14:06): In relation to this matter, as the Premier has said, it is self-evident that cabinet documents are confidential documents. That is a universal proposition in parliaments around this country and, indeed, around the world where the British system of government exists.

The situation in respect of the Auditor-General is this. At some point in time—and I have not been able to ascertain exactly at what point in time, nor have I been able to ascertain by what means—it became a convention that the Auditor-General of the day (or it became a habit perhaps is a better way of putting it), when conducting an inquiry and seeking, as the Premier said, a shorthand summary of something which had been before cabinet, would visit one of the cabinet officers in DPC and say, 'Look, I am interested in whatever it is.'

The cabinet officers, without there actually being an explicit change of policy, as I understand it, started to get into the practice of obliging the Auditor in that respect. As best I can tell, and I have seen nothing to suggest otherwise, this was not an explicit decision of anybody and, for all I know, it has been going on for many years, including back possibly during the time of the previous Liberal government.

The point is that there was no policy as such that these things would be released. It appears to have been something that had just started to happen and had been happening for a period of time. The evidence of this is that, on occasions, members might have noticed that in the Auditor-General's various reports there have in the past occasionally been references to 'cabinet did this', 'cabinet said that' or whatever.

It was entirely appropriate, I would have thought, for there to be a single understanding within government and without government about the appropriate use to which cabinet materials should be put, so that determination was made; that applies to all people, whether it be the Auditor-General or the ICAC commissioner or whoever it might be, and that is the position.

I did speak with the Auditor-General about this matter and I did explain to him what was going on. He was aware of the fact that the practice in South Australia appears to have evolved in a way which was not consistent with what he understood to be the practice in other Australian jurisdictions, namely, that in other jurisdictions access of this type did not occur. That is essentially the position.

The SPEAKER: Supplementary, member for MacKillop.