Parliamentary privilege
Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (12:02): My question is for the Leader of the Government and Attorney-General. Minister, you will be familiar with the longstanding principle of parliamentary privilege and the longstanding Bill of Rights principles as outlined in article 9. You may not be familiar with the extraordinary email received today from the Minister for Health and Minister for Ambulance Services, Mary-Anne Thomas, that seeks to interfere with, block and effectively gag the ability of MPs to raise urgent health matters on behalf of their constituents in question time or other parliamentary procedures. The extraordinary email states:
Therefore we require a consent form signed by the constituent and would appreciate your office to send signed consent forms with letters or following Question Time …
Minister, this is a gag, pure and simple, seeking to impose constraints, and I note the email has been rescinded in the last few minutes. I therefore ask: will you intervene to see that there are no requirements of this type imposed?
Ms SYMES (Northern Victoria—Leader of the Government, Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (12:03): Mr Davis, you have put me in a precarious situation where I cannot respond in full, because I have not seen the content of the email. You have given a snippet of it. You have formed your own views in relation to the content of that. I think my inclination would be that it is very important—
Members interjecting.
Ms SYMES: I may have. I have not seen it. I have not been monitoring my inbox today. What instantly comes to mind for me is that this may be in response to a particular individual’s concern about their privacy being breached, and that is an important factor and perhaps could be quite a serious concern to members of the public when they provide their information to MPs and they may have had a breach of confidence themselves. Without having further information in relation to that—you have canvassed it under parliamentary privilege and all these other obligations—you have actually failed to give proper details in relation to your question. You have put me in a position where I cannot respond in full, because you have not provided a lot of detail in relation to that. But I think that a request to make it clear that an individual has given permission for their information to be presented in Parliament does not sound unreasonable to me.
Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (12:05): Extraordinary. Minister, with the elective surgery waiting list at 90 000, huge blowouts in waiting times and many patients vulnerable and desperate, a basic tenet of democracy is being violated by this proposed new and extraordinary requirement. The Victorian Parliament first met in 1856, 166 years ago. Why has the government seen fit to propose this undemocratic requirement after 166 years?
Ms SYMES (Northern Victoria—Leader of the Government, Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (12:06): I think I have answered your question in relation to some of the issues that may be relevant to the issues that you have raised. You canvassed it from one perspective—a biased perspective—about the ability to use the information of vulnerable Victorians. I think the counterargument would be the protection of that information and the privacy of those people, and basic respect for those people is also a counterconsideration.