Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the comments of the minister. The reason that the opposition have gone down this track is that at a private briefing that the government was good enough to provide our backbench committee a commitment was given to provide additional information which had been requested at the meeting. We were subsequently told that that information would not be made available to us. So this is the only avenue available for us to gather the information that we seek. The request to provide the information was initially made some time ago to the minister's office, I might add. The reason for the date is that a delegation of coalition members is going to New Zealand to look at the issues relating to the importation of apples from New Zealand and it would be of great assistance if this data were available for that visit. That is the basis for the date in this order for the production of documents. Had the information been freely given to us, as promised at the initial briefing, we would not be in this situation today.