Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS
1636 COUNCIL Wednesday, 1 June 2011
PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — I move:
That this house requires the Leader of the Government to
table in the Council by 12 noon on Tuesday, 14 June 2011,
the following documents relating to the government’s
advanced metering infrastructure project, also known as the
smart meters project:
(a) all documents relating to all cost-benefit analyses of the
project;
(b) all correspondence and instructions, direction, guidelines
and similar documents provided to, or received from, the
party or parties undertaking any cost-benefit analyses;
(c) all correspondence to or from the former and current
ministers for energy and resources, his department or
agencies, and Victoria’s electricity distribution
businesses concerning smart meters;
(d) all documents relating to the operation of time-of-use
pricing and smart meters, including the government’s
decision to impose a moratorium on the operation of
time-of-use pricing and the government’s subsequent
decision to determine that time-of-use processing will
not be mandatory; and
(e) all documents relating to any proposed communications,
education or public awareness campaigns concerning
smart meters, including financial documents and
invoices.
This is going to be an extraordinarily easy motion for
the government. I can see that Mr O’Donohue is in the
starting blocks ready to go on this one.
Ms Pulford — He has got that look about him.
Mr BARBER — He is tense and ready to go. He
will no doubt support this motion because this motion is
in fact an identical motion, with the exception of a few
trivial words, to the one which the government, then in
opposition, itself moved in 2010 in relation to a whole
range of documents that would tell us a little bit more
about smart meters and the pros and cons of them.
Better than that, though, is that it was coalition policy at
the last state election to release this exact material, and
the terms in which the coalition stated that were that it
would release the documents previously not given to
the Legislative Council — that is, the documents that
were covered by the original David Davis motion,
which I have copied out quite faithfully to form my
motion. I look forward to the speedy passage of this
motion through the house.
Mr O’DONOHUE (Eastern Victoria) — I am
pleased to rise in response to Mr Barber’s very brief
contribution on this motion. As he correctly points out,
this motion reflects — save, as he said, some minor
changes — the motion moved by Mr David Davis last
year. This motion requires the Leader of the
Government to table by 12 noon on 14 June the
following documents:
(a) all documents relating to all cost-benefit analyses of the
project;
(b) all correspondence and instructions, direction, guidelines
and similar documents provided to, or received from, the
party or parties undertaking any cost-benefit analyses;
(c) all correspondence to or from the former and current
ministers for energy and resources, his department or
agencies, and Victoria’s electricity distribution
businesses concerning smart meters;
(d) all documents relating to the operation of time-of-use
pricing and smart meters, including the government’s
decision to impose a moratorium on the operation of
time-of-use pricing and the government’s subsequent
decision to determine that time-of-use processing will
not be mandatory; and
(e) all documents relating to any proposed communications,
education or public awareness campaigns concerning
smart meters, including financial documents and
invoices.
I will start by noting that again Mr Barber is requesting
that the government respond to this motion in a very
short time frame. I make the point that whilst the
government is happy to accept the motion, with the
usual caveats, for the government to respond in less
than two weeks would be very challenging indeed. As
Mr Barber points out, whilst this is similar to a motion
that the previous Parliament passed, the reality is that
there are processes within government for these sorts of
documents to be produced. I call on the house to be
realistic about the time frame required for documents to
be produced.
The government is very happy and indeed willing to be
responsive to the house and to be open and transparent
in the provision of information, but I anticipate that to
allow less than two weeks for the production of
documents will be very challenging. I say that not just
on the basis of the processes of government but also on
the basis of previous experience with this motion when
the opposition was in government, because the
Legislative Council passed a similar motion to the one
before us on 23 June and the Legislative Council
subsequently received two letters from the then
Attorney-General, Rob Hulls, about this matter, the first
on 27 July and the second on 30 August.
I will read into Hansard the correspondence from the
then Attorney-General dated 30 August. It states, under
the heading ‘Order for the production of documents —
smart meters’: