Senator BOURNE (7:35 PM) —by leave—At the time the Senate asked for the document to be tabled I had not heard many of the things that the Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts (Senator Alston) just said. I must say that the document was not half as interesting to me before that statement as it is now. Before that statement we had heard a few comments from Mr Errol Simper and we had read a couple of comments in newspapers and elsewhere probably related to that article. Who knew whether they were true. Now, of course, I am assuming that everything I have read is true. The document is absolutely fascinating. It has a great deal in it that all of us who have the ABC's best interests at heart really want to read, and it is in no way laudatory of the government. Perhaps I am wrong, but the only way to prove that to me now is to come up with the document, to table it and to demonstrate that that is not the case. Until I see the document that is what I am going to assume is in it.

It was interesting that the minister said that the document had been—I was writing the words as he said them and I may not have them quite right—`attached to a submission to cabinet and lodged with the cabinet office'. It is fascinating that you can attach something to a submission to cabinet and lodge it with the cabinet office and therefore you never have to show it to anybody again as long as you live. You could do that with anything, could you not? The mind boggles. It is just wonderful. Think of the things you could hide that way. It is just extraordinary.

As far as I knew, this was an independent study—by an independent and very well-respected organisation—of the ABC's digitisation strategy. What can be secret about that? If it is purely because of a budget strategy, about whether or not the government is going to fund the ABC—which I now doubt, having heard all this—to digitise its entire production and transmission network, it is obvious that when I bring up this motion again, as I will, after the budget, the minister will be more than happy to table it immediately. I tell the minister now that that is what I am going to do. I look forward to seeing it and to being proven wrong. Concerning all my suspicions about this document, I look forward to seeing it and to being proven wrong about what I now think about document.