Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The problem I have here is that the minister is saying he wants Justice Callinan to bring down a full and comprehensive report. Everybody here is in total agreement with having that kind of inquiry and a report of that kind. My concern is that the minister is saying that the findings will be made public but not the report. The findings could involve 10 points at the end of the report in terms of recommendations about what may or may not happen. That is not going to give comfort to people who want to go through, blow by blow, what actually occurred during a time sequence, who was responsible and how it worked out.

Many people will be concerned about this and will even suggest that there is a cover-up, unless the government releases the report. Otherwise they are going to say: ‘That’s what the findings were but what did they base those findings on? Did they take this or that into account?’ So there must be a way of presenting the whole report. Justice Callinan could decide to have part of the report remain confidential on the basis that it covered incriminating evidence against an individual, but the bulk of the report would cover the detail of what occurred—and that is what the Australian people want to read, not just a two-pager at the end of 10 or 20 recommendations coming out of the report.

That is why both the Labor Party and the Greens are pushing here to have the report tabled in parliament so that the community has access to it, and not just to the findings or the recommendations contained in the report. You are not really giving us much comfort, Minister, and I do not think you are giving any comfort to people who want to know the sequence of events, by telling us that we will only have the findings publicly available. I would like to know how you intend to provide the material I am talking about—the day-to-day sequence, from the beginning, when we knew and what we knew, through to the end. That is what people want to know. Everybody would respect the fact that some information would need to be privileged in the sense that it might influence court cases or incriminate people. That is understood. But there must be a halfway house between having nothing on the table and just having the recommendations made public.