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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-07-02 Daily Xml
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Government Community Engagement

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (14:57): Given his answer, can the minister rule out that any of the information that has been provided by these callers to the government is used for further communication by the government outside that initial inquiry? Is that information passed on and used for further communication by the government to those people?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform) (14:57): Again, I thank the honourable member for his question. If I can just explain it this way, in my own personal experience, because I took a number of these calls, some of the people did not identify themselves at all. They just said, 'Hello—

Mr Knoll: The ones who did.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: The ones who did? I think, out of the 15 or so that I spoke to, probably two or three identified themselves and one or two wanted something else to happen. As far as I'm aware, all that happens is that it goes to the relevant Public Service entity—in my case, it was mainly AGD, but it could have been SAPOL or it could have been something to do with youth justice or whoever—

Mr Knoll: So the information is not harvested by Premier and Cabinet?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: To the best of my knowledge, all that happens is—

Mr Marshall: All the answers are 'to the best of my knowledge'. Why don't you just make a statement: yes or no?

Members interjecting:

Ms Vlahos: Do you need a red frog?

The SPEAKER: The member for Taylor is called to order.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: When I say 'to the best of my knowledge', that is something that I think is important, because it's very good not to make statements that aren't accurate to the best of your knowledge. It's good to do your research, and it's also good not to be misleading, if you can avoid it, by simply asking what the true set of facts is.

What I'm saying is that, as far as I'm aware, all that happens with any of these inquiries is that they go off to the relevant agency if they can help. That might mean that the person receives a phone call from a public servant; it might mean there's a letter written; it might be that some piece of information is sent out. I'm looking at my ministerial colleagues who were there, and I assume they had a similar experience in the course of the evening.

I think the only real exception to that, possibly, in terms of the political purposes attached to GOVchat, might be a less fortunate experience that the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure had when some 200 people wound up calling in for a political purpose because they were agitated by the member for Bright, using his high-tech skills and very modern methods of communication to agitate a large number of people about noisy trains. To the best of my knowledge, that is the only political element that anyone has found in GOVchat. As I said, I was feeling a little bit—

Ms Vlahos: Unloved?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes, that's right, when we only got just under 300 calls and I heard that the Minister for Infrastructure had over 500, but when I discovered that half of them came from the member for Bright and his friends, that made me feel a bit better.

Mr Pisoni interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley is testing my patience. The member for Morphett.

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