House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-09-11 Daily Xml

Contents

STATE RECORDS

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood—Leader of the Opposition) (14:40): Supplementary, sir.

The SPEAKER: Before the supplementary, the Premier will refer to the Leader of the Opposition as the leader rather than the second person pronoun. Leader.

Mr MARSHALL: Did you, Premier, as the former education minister, or any of your staff, seek approval from the State Records director to destroy records in accordance with the Intention to Destroy Records Report (ITDRR) requirements under the State Records Act—not your computer, but that of your staff?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (14:41): All of these questions are predicated upon a certain assumption. The assumption is that there were, in the first place, official records which were not otherwise stored. They are two big, big assumptions: first of all, that they were official records at all for the purposes of the State Records Act, and, secondly, that they were not otherwise collected or stored somewhere. It is not possible to proceed, with respect, to ask questions based on those two assumptions and be able to say—

Ms Chapman: Rubbish.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: If members opposite are happy to say these things are total assumptions, that renders the question irrelevant because how can it be that something that is not an official record is governed by the destruction schedule attaching to official records—question No. 1? How is it that something that comes out of a computer and is destroyed, which is an official record but is nevertheless stored either in hard copy or in some other electronic form, destruction of an official record when the record is, in fact, kept? So, with respect, the question proceeds from a misunderstanding of the situation.