Mr. Conor King:

From our perspective, we did not have the benefit of that oversight body meeting. It was not discussed at our meeting with the oversight body. We found out on the evening of 20 December in advance of a Cabinet meeting of 21 December.

I will back up to agree with what Mr. Guinan said. We were told that the Government would have loved to talk to us were it not for Cabinet confidentiality. We were advised there is a Cabinet handbook. I am not an expert in this at all, but I would have thought legislation might trump a Cabinet handbook. The legislation as it currently stands, under Defence Force Regulation S6, which falls out of the Defence (Amendment) Act 1990, provides that the representative organisations must be consulted on any amendments to the Defence Act, administrative instructions, general routine orders or Defence Forces regulations that impact on the scope of representation. We signed up to that, as did the Department of Defence and therefore the Minister.