Oakden Mental Health Facility

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:37): Supplementary to the Attorney-General: given that Commissioner Lander in his report to the parliament has warned in respect of the destruction of emails and the importance of securing government business on government emails and not private emails, will you as Attorney-General issue a directive to ensure that none of the Oakden documents are destroyed pending this inquiry?

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) (14:37): I thank the honourable deputy leader for her question. The law presently requires a number of things to occur. Some of those things, to mention but a few, include compliance with requirements about record keeping. They also require people to comply with the law about acting with honesty and integrity in one's role as a public officer. They also require people to be cooperative with reasonable investigations by the public sector agencies, which include of course the Ombudsman, in which circumstance we are now talking.

If the deputy leader, if I am to understand her correctly, believes that adding my voice to the body of law, statute and common law, that requires people to obey the law, I say now in the parliament before the deputy leader, before you, Mr Speaker, most importantly, and others: all employees of the state government should observe the law. They should all act according to law. The law is there to bind them as it is to bind the rest of us. I expect, and the government expects, that all of them will act lawfully. If they do not, the law already provides for appropriate sanctions in the circumstance of them breaching the law.