Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I will just make a brief contribution. ‘Frustration’ is one descriptor for the member for Nelson, but we should all feel disrespected by government, given that this is the third time a similarly‑worded resolution has come to the council and will undoubtedly be passed. At what point are we collectively going to say to government, ‘Enough’? I don’t believe that government would have the same level of comfort ignoring a similar resolution from the House of Assembly, so we shouldn’t tolerate it. We are the House of review, and a really important part of our job is to hold government to account.
A number of members who are here today were at the Integrity Commission’s briefing on ethics and integrity in the lunch break. It was a short but good refresher on what comprises ethics and integrity. It was a good reminder of the Members’ Code of Conduct, which we sign up to, which requires us to act always in the public interest. It’s very clear from the history of corporate influence on politics in Tasmania that successive governments, various ministers, have put corporate interests ahead of the public interest. There’s been no line of sight to understand how decisions have been made that manifestly work against the public interest.
The history of gaming machines here in Tasmania is perhaps the best example of how corporate influence has had the ear of successive governments of both colours. It has been able to establish a very profitable system for itself, which – as we heard from the member for Nelson this morning – has in the past year led to $193 million coming out of the pockets of Tasmanians right across the island.
This is in part because when the deed with the Federal Group expired, there had been a whole lot of lobbying done before it expired. The gambling industry from here and interstate was lining up at the doors of the Premier and various ministers, and the system we have now, that hooked $193 million out of the pockets of our communities, was in very significant part designed by the gambling industry. The decision to walk away from a promise made by the Premier to deliver on mandatory pre‑commitment, so the people would lose less of their money, was heavily influenced by the gambling industry here and interstate. That policy switch, and that framework that was put in place, was manifestly not in the public interest.
Ultimately, we are all public officials, public servants. A minister of the Crown is a servant of the Tasmanian people. The only reason that you would find having details of your ministerial diary being published ‘onerous’, to use the member for Murchison’s word, is if you find it irksome or uncomfortable to explain how you spend your time as a minister when you’re on the public dime; either because you don’t want people to know which vested interests you’re meeting with, or potentially, because you’re a slacker and you’d have a ministerial diary full of holes and holidays.
It does take me back to the Basslink debacle of the summer of 2016, and we shouldn’t speak ill of the departed from this place, but former minister for energy, Matthew Groom, was suspiciously absent when the cable went down. He was absent from public communications, out of sight somewhere. We asked for his ministerial diary through Right to Information, and after an extended and deeply frustrating period of being blocked, we got a version of what is posted today as some indicator of a ministerial diary, and it had blocks in it that just said ‘busy’.
Busy all day, busy for half the next day, ‘I’m busy’. He was just busy. That’s why he couldn’t talk to Tasmanians about the Basslink outage and what that meant for energy security in Tasmania. As it turns out, we busted him. He had gone on holiday with his family and didn’t come back until some days after the cable went down.
Perhaps ministers are reluctant to share the full details of their diary because, for example, back in 2022, there was a flash fundraiser up in the Premier’s office, using a public space for a meeting with corporate leaders, $4000 a ticket. We had this confirmed: $4000 a ticket. Who was there? The CEOs of the big salmon corporations. What promise were they made by the Premier at that dinner? They were made a promise to their faces that the Premier was committed to expansion of inshore finfish farming. That private $4000‑a‑head dinner saw a policy commitment being made out of sight, out of mind and beyond the knowledge of everyday Tasmanians who pay ministers’ salaries.
We have Font PR here, a former chief of staff of a former premier, a huge corporate client list, massive ownership of rural and regional papers and a very clear path through to the minister’s office, through to the Premier’s office. Now, we know Font PR is a registered lobbyist and they are undertaking a legitimate business. I am not taking away from that; but in a place like Tasmania, which is so cosy, so small, the connections between politicians and vested interests and other stakeholders can often be, just by virtue of how we live here, quite close. Those connections, should they influence public policy, should be understood by Tasmanians, in the same way that we had a short refresher today from the Integrity Commission on declaring conflicts of interest, which is not something that we are culturally very good at here.
We should have a cultural commitment to transparency in democratic governance. Ultimately, it is the people of Tasmania who pay the wages of ministers who do earn more than a quarter of a million dollars a year. It is simply not good enough that most of the democratic world has accepted the reality of the need for genuine transparency and publishes ministerial diaries, whereas here, this Council has been given the middle finger by government in response to its previous two resolutions, but worse than that, much worse than that: the Tasmanian people are being treated with contempt by a government that talks the big talk on transparency but whose track record is very poor.
I am sure members have received a copy of the independent review of Tasmania’s Right to Information Framework which landed in our inboxes at 3:36 this afternoon, undertaken by Professors Tim McCormack and Rick Snell[names ok], very esteemed academics and contributors to our community. I will read a couple of choice lines which are very relevant to this debate;
It’s an easy thing for political leaders, especially early in a new term of government, to articulate a commitment to transparency. We all know it’s beneficial, and we all want to be seen to be committing to it ourselves.
However, transparency in government does not result from rhetoric devoid of substance, and it is not an end in itself. The ultimate objective is the quality of our democracy and an effective RTI framework helps strengthen three key inextricable threads that are core to the past, to that goal.
This goes back to transparency about how ministers are spending their time, who with and to what purpose. These three threads are increased accountability of the government to the people, increased participation of the people in their governance, and increased commitment to the concept of government as custodians of public information on behalf of the people.
After extensive consultation, no doubt with a number of members of this place, but also within government and without, the reviewers found it has become increasingly clear that the current frustrations with a lack of transparency in government stem less from legislative design and more from cultural and administrative shortcomings. That is what we are dealing with here. Not an administrative shortcoming, but a cultural attitude towards accountability and transparency, which is deeply wanting. (tbc 5.44)
A central and recurring concern is the persistence of a culture of non-disclosure and obfuscation.
Very germane to this debate we are having here. One of the recommendations they make which the Greens are very interested to see happen here is the automatic release of cabinet documents after 10 years as an important contribution to a significant transformation in Tasmania’s information culture. But they’ve also recommended Tasmania join the growing number of Westminster systems that now routinely release cabinet policy information 30 days after a cabinet decision.
These changes would send an unambiguous message that transparency in government information practise is the new default, not the exception, and act as a circuit breaker to the prevailing culture. Now I haven’t had a chance to read that large body of work yet, but I think there’ll be something in it for us all because all of us at one time or another have sought to extract information from government through right to information. Many months and grey hairs later, often what we get back is pages full of black redacted material.
It’s the same rubbish, different bin as pretending that you’re being transparent about ministerial diaries when what you’re doing is tokenistic at best and lip service at worst. In New Zealand, where they have an open culture of declaring conflicts of interest at the beginning of meetings, it is de rigueur for members around the table to openly declare or question whether this connection that they have could be perceived or actually be a conflict of interest.
They do that in New Zealand, and also proactively release within 30 business days of final decisions being taken by cabinet, all cabinet papers, unless there is a good reason not to publish all or part of the material or to delay the release.
I will close with the thing is that good governments have nothing to hide. Good ministers have nothing to hide. Ministerial Diaries should be a matter of public record. They are funded by the people who put us in there. They’re funded by the people who pay the salaries of government ministers.
I know this is the third such motion that Council has debated and will pass. After the last two resolutions of this place were ignored, perhaps we could have been a bit more hardline in this motion but there’s a kindness that’s part of the culture of this place, which is one of the reasons it’s a good place to work, Mr President. I understand what the member for Nelson is trying to do here is give the government an opportunity to be its best self but come 5 December, if there’s not a coherent and responsible response to this third motion on establishing a process to determine what is the best form to publish ministerial diaries in, then there needs to be some further action taken.
I don’t know, Mr President, if you and the chair of committees, for example, would feel compelled, perhaps, on behalf of the Council to go and have a chat to the Premier about why there’s this resistance to a now commonplace transparency mechanism. We don’t want to be back here early next year because we know the member for Nelson is not going to give up on this. Nor should we, because we’ve all resolved that ministerial diaries should be published, that they should detail who a minister is meeting with and the purpose of that meeting. That is the why of the meeting, and it only raises suspicions, not just of a lack of adherence to transparency, but it raises suspicions they’re trying to hide something. It works against the government ultimately not to hear what this Council will three times have asked them to do. At some point we are going to have to assert our authority and require government to do this. We’re not requiring them to spend any money. It’s not a budget bill or anything like that. We’re requiring them to, in good faith, establish a process of consultation. It shouldn’t be rocket surgery because now we have any number of other jurisdictions that have a model in place for the publication of ministerial diaries, so we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. What we need is for government to understand this issue is not going to go away and it just makes them look shifty to have them ignore a resolution of this place again on what these days is just a very basic transparency and accountability measure.
I am very thankful to the member for Nelson for her tenacity. I hope that third time’s the charm, but we’ll be here on 5 December waiting for the government’s response and let’s hope this time they get it.
