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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-10-29 Daily Xml
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COURTS ADMINISTRATION AUTHORITY

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (14:45): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the minister representing the Attorney-General a question about the Courts Administration Authority.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD: The Courts Administration Authority provides a record of judicial comments following sentencing on its website. In former times it has produced that information within just a matter of hours or so of the decision being handed down and made public. Of course, the court system is public. People can be made aware of judicial comments literally by sitting in the courts and hearing them.

In that spirit, those comments have been put on the website—as recently as 12 or so months ago—within an hour or so of those comments being made. In recent times, not all cases are now put on the website. Indeed, there is a delay of at least 48 hours or so from the time the comments are made until they appear on the website. Why has this changed, and will the Attorney-General investigate the matter and seek to have a speedy response from the Courts Administration Authority on these very important public comments?

The Hon. R.I. Lucas interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister Assisting the Premier in Public Sector Management) (14:47): I thank the Hon. Mr Hood for his question. It is interesting. The Hon. Mr Lucas is interjecting, but he was the one who, just a couple of weeks ago through his Budget and Finance Committee, talked about how much money this government allegedly spends on so-called spin doctors. The sort of spin doctors he is talking about in that committee are the sorts of people the Hon. Mr Hood is talking about.

By far the largest number of those and by far the largest cost relating to the government's media-related people are doing the sorts of jobs that the Hon. Mr Hood is talking about—putting information on public websites. If members think back to the answer to a question I previously gave, they will recall that a lot of money is spent on providing information to the public through the government websites, and the people who do that are communications officers, if you like, within the government.

If you want to have that sort of information available, you must have public servants who do that sort of work. It ill behoves, then, people such as the Hon. Mr Lucas to throw around these $20 million plus figures and say, 'Oh, look, these are all spin doctors.' I think that it even included people such as chiefs of staff and ministerial advisers; they are all supposed to be in this category. A lot of people appropriately work in government who do the sorts of jobs that the Hon. Mr Hood is talking about, putting up information on websites, and it is a very important task.

Attacking and criticising these people who do this job, and being continually told by the opposition that we spend too much money on these sorts of activities, makes it a bit difficult to maintain that sort of service to the public when the people who do it are being unfairly attacked by the opposition and others. I will take the question on notice and bring back a response for the honourable member, because it is a reasonable question, and I thank him for raising it.

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