Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Well, I imagine that that is exactly the kind of situation where the commissioner may decide to allow someone to disclose this to a family member. But we think it's dangerous to allow that to happen in every single case without any reference to the commission itself, because there are cases where family members may also be the subject of the same investigation or separate investigations, and if we were to allow an across-the-board permission for people to disclose these types of matters to their spouse then that would potentially jeopardise investigations. But the case-by-case discretion for the commissioner exists under the legislation.