Page 2588 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 24 August 1993
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ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT INFORMATION
Discussion of Matter of Public Importance
MADAM SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Mrs Carnell proposing that a matter of public importance be submitted to the Assembly for discussion, namely:
The Government's failure to provide adequate access to information to ensure that government is accountable.
MRS CARNELL (Leader of the Opposition) (3.58): Madam Speaker, freedom of information laws give everybody a legally enforceable right to know what government knows, and I mean that quite sincerely. It gives everybody a legally enforceable right to know what government knows, except in certain circumstances, and they are laid out in the various Acts. Those certain circumstances are to do with privacy, security or problems with legal cases and some others. Generally, information on all the things government is doing or, for that matter, not doing should be available to the public at large. The right to know what government is doing or not doing is essential to democracy. It is only with access to information that the Opposition and the Independents can do the job we were elected to do. It is only with access to information that we can be part of informed debate, and the essence of good government is informed debate. That should not mean debate that is based upon leaks of information - information we have half of at times; it means being fully informed.
There are a number of ways, unfortunately, that a government with a siege mentality can thwart FOI requests, and it seems that the Follett Government uses them all. First of all, the Follett Government fails in many cases to grant full access to material. Last year, the ACT Government granted full access in only 32 per cent of cases; the Commonwealth granted full access in 71 per cent of cases. But the ACT Government was not always so secretive. Two years ago it granted full access in 66 per cent of cases. Secondly, the Follett Government is slow to respond to FOI requests, and I think everybody here has good examples of very slow responses. By law, requests are meant to be handled in 30 days. Last year, the ACT Government achieved this in only 37 per cent of cases, down from 65 per cent two years ago. The Commonwealth managed to handle 71 per cent of requests in 30 days. I think everybody here who has put in requests has been subject to delays, delays that are totally unnecessary.
Then there is the issue we have debated already today, the issue of fees. The Follett Government uses the imposition of an open-ended fee structure to discourage FOI requests. Fascinatingly, the Australian Consumers Association highlighted this as long ago as 1986, when the Commonwealth first introduced fees for their FOI requests. They said that fees inevitably tied the hands of some people, stopped some people requesting information. The FOI legislation in the ACT states quite categorically in section 29(3)(c) that the agency or Minister shall - and I stress "shall" - take into account when deciding whether or not to remit fees "whether the giving of access is in the general public interest or in the interest of a substantial section of the public".
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