This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The New South Wales state government has bent to pressure to hand over three documents related to contentious policy decisions to the upper house, avoiding a showdown that could have seen one of the most senior members of the government ejected from parliament.

In a spectacular about-face, the government agreed to hand the Tune report on out-of-home care for at risk children and the business cases underpinning stadium upgrades and the plan to move the Powerhouse museum from Sydney’s city to Parramatta to the Legislative Council by Friday.

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This does not necessarily mean they will be made public – there may still be claims for privilege – but it is likely that each document will be made public in some form.



The release will shed light on three highly contentious policies in NSW. The decision to spend $2.3bn on the upgrades of Sydney stadiums has dogged the Berejiklian Liberal government for months and despite efforts to reduce the size of the projects, there remains deep scepticism in the community about whether it represents good value for money.

The decision to move the Powerhouse to Parramatta was made by previous premier Mike Baird. Its current site at Ultimo appears destined to be turned into apartments.



The report by David Tune was completed in 2016 and is understood to be highly critical of the out-of home care system for children. Since then, the government has announced an expansion of the program, which disproportionately affects Aboriginal children.

Members of the upper house will be able to view the documents.



“This is a complete surrender by the Berejiklian government to the power asserted by the Legislative Council to compel the production of these documents,” the opposition leader in the upper house, Adam Searle, said.

“It is now clear that the upper house does have the power to order production even of cabinet documents, as long as they do not disclose the internal workings and decisions of the cabinet.”



The threat of a constitutional showdown, prompted when maverick Liberal MP Matthew Mason-Cox crossed the floor on Tuesday night to back the opposition and minor parties in a motion censuring the leader of the government in the upper house, Don Harwin, has now been defused.

This kind of constitutional showdown had not been seen since the 1990s, when former Labor treasurer and leader of the house Michael Egan refused to produce documents.

Mason-Cox had already crossed the floor on three occasions to demand the reports.

On Tuesday night Labor, the Greens, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party and Mason-Cox joined forces to issue an ultimatum to the government to either release the reports or face Harwin’s expulsion. Christian Democrat Fred Nile sided with the government. The vote was 21 to 20.

The expulsion of Harwin would have made the numbers for the government in the Legislative Council even more precarious than they are now. It currently depends on the votes of one minor party member to pass legislation.



It also threatened to test the limits of claims of cabinet in confidence, which has been increasingly used by the NSW government and other governments to resist calls to provide information to both the parliament and the public.

NSW in constitutional crisis as government MP crosses floor over secret reports Read more

Several members of the upper house made impassioned speeches about the role of the chamber as a house of review and their concern that the executive branch of government was attempting to stifle proper debate.

“The long-suffering public should welcome this commitment to accountability and transparency,” Greens MLC David Shoebridge said.

“There has been a shroud of secrecy over almost controversial decision made by this government. Finally parliament is striking back at executive overreach.”



Mason-Cox has been an outspoken advocate for reform of the child protection system and has been seeking the Tune report into out-of-home care for at-risk children for over a year.

In the past two months he has also been outspoken about the spending of $2.3bn on the controversial stadium upgrade and moving the Powerhouse to Parramatta, at a cost of $1.1bn, without the public seeing the business cases behind the projects, while child protection is underfunded.

On Tuesday night Mason-Cox said he had come to “a fork in the road”.