Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

The minister is correct—which they have done, but, as I said, under duress. The truth is that these amendments are incredibly simple amendments. They reflect what you would hope in this parliament would just be common sense—that is, for a small administrative territory like Norfolk Island, with a limited population and limited administrative capacity, they are going to find it extraordinarily expensive and bureaucratically unnecessary to implement wholesale the provisions of the freedom of information and privacy acts which apply to Australia. They have said so consistently in their submissions to inquiries about this bill.

I take the opportunity to remind the House about what was said. In their submission dated April 2010, the Norfolk Island government reiterated that the format for the FOI proposed within this bill would be unsustainable for Norfolk Island from both a financial and a resource perspective. They further went on to talk about how this bill was going to affect them in relation to the implementation of privacy provisions. Again, they said that they would find the time and resource costs arising from the complexity of such a system, as suggested in this bill, unsustainable. They believe the Commonwealth have underestimated that time and that complexity. They believe that it is unnecessarily bureaucratic and the opposition shares that view. We believe that was a sensible response. They have not said that they are not interested in administrative law reform within Norfolk Island. In fact, they have explicitly said that they are interested in implementing law reform in both of these areas but they would like to develop FOI and privacy regimes that are more suitable for a territory of their size and of that nature.

For me, that is just a statement of the absolute obvious and the government does not have any particular arguments as to why they cannot sit down with the government of Norfolk Island and come up with an arrangement that is more suitable for them. Instead, they are insisting on the wholesale passing of this bill because they can, because they know they have the Norfolk Island government in a position of weakness and therefore they are just going to override what are the sensible objections of that government as expressed to both the government and the committee inquiring into this particular bill. We think that that is just bureaucracy gone mad. Why is it that the 1,500 inhabitants of Norfolk Island need to have privacy and FOI acts wholesale as they apply to the 22 million people of the Commonwealth of Australia? It does not mean that their rights are going to be somehow less than for anyone else in Australia. It means that they could come up with something sensible and more suitable for their own territory.

This approach has been tried in the past. Indeed, this is the approach the Labor government chose to follow with the government of Norfolk Island on some other administrative reforms as related to the role of the Commonwealth Ombudsman on Norfolk Island. They were happy to work with the Commonwealth on that particular reform so that it would apply to Norfolk Island in a way that was more suitable for Norfolk Island. Surely it is the citizens and the government of Norfolk Island who are best placed to judge that. I therefore commend these amendments to the House. (Time expired)

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