Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Prime Minister for Social Inclusion) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a statement in addition to my statement of 5 February 2009 in relation to the production of documents in order of the Senate No. 27 of 4 February 2009.

Leave granted.

The government believes that the provision of documents related to the modelling conducted for Australia’s low pollution future: the economics of climate change mitigation would cause substantial commercial harm to organisations that were contracted to assist Treasury. In the case of the Monash Multi-Regional Forecasting model, the MMRF model, provision of the model codes and database would cause substantial commercial harm to Monash University—in particular, to the Centre of Policy Studies at that university. The model codes and databases for this model are the private, confidential information of that organisation. They are sold as a commercial product by Monash University. Disclosure of these model codes and databases would have the result that other organisations would have had access to this information without entering into a commercial arrangement with Monash University. In effect, Monash University would be deprived of the value of the model codes and databases, resulting in commercial harm through the loss of the market to which they had previously sold their products.

In the case of the Global Trade and Environment Model, the GTEM, provision of the database would cause substantial commercial harm to the Centre for Global Trade Analysis at Purdue University. The Centre for Global Trade Analysis provides the global trade analysis project database from which the database for the GTEM has been derived. Disclosure of this GTEM database would have the effect of disclosing a substantial portion of the private, confidential information of the Centre for Global Trade Analysis. Disclosure of this database would have the result that other organisations would have access to this information, again without entering into a commercial arrangement with the Centre for Global Trade Analysis. This would prejudice the ability of the Centre for Global Trade Analysis to sell access to the database in Australian and world markets, resulting in commercial harm through the loss of the market to which they have previously sold their products.