Page 2590 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 24 August 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
In Tasmania, there are no fees at all for members of parliament. Again, wrong, Mr Connolly. In South Australia, there are also no fees, unless you go over $350 per request. Mr Berry rightly made the comment earlier that that would be an exceedingly large request. That is substantially higher than the average request. So it is free for opposition members, except in the unique circumstance that one request goes over $350. We have a situation in Queensland where, again, there is no fee for service. All there is is an application fee; that is, $30 straight. It is just a $30 charge, a flat fee - no per hour rates, no $15, no $20; just a $30 application fee. Again, as I said, every State and the Commonwealth charge an amount per sheet for photocopying. The only State that Mr Connolly was right about was New South Wales, which does levy charges. There is no doubt about that. The Northern Territory and Western Australia have yet to sort out what they are doing.
What is really important in this debate is to ask when access to information is in the public interest, and the short answer is often. Everybody who makes an FOI request and intends to disseminate the information they get, can - should - claim a fee waiver. Anyone who is able to broadcast or publish official information more broadly is acting in the general public interest or in the interest of a substantial section of the public. Therefore, officials should exercise their discretionary power and waive fees. These are not my words, they are the words of Paul Chadwick in his textbook on this subject, FOI - How to Use the Freedom of Information Laws. This is a textbook on the subject. That is a quote from Paul Chadwick. This Government does not agree with Paul Chadwick; there is no doubt about that.
This morning Mr Connolly said that the bureaucracy could be bogged down with FOI requests from the Opposition, that they would end up with this absolutely remarkable amount of work, which would mean that they could not get on with the business of government. He seemed to indicate that the Opposition filed a large number of FOI requests - again, wrong. As Mr Berry said earlier, the Opposition uses FOI very sparingly. We have lodged in the whole term of this Assembly - not just last year - less than 15 FOI requests, hardly an excessive number. In fact, there were only 156 FOI requests in total during the year 1991-92.
Let us look at the requests Mr Berry did not believe were in the public interest. Remember that the legislation talks about the public interest. First of all, the absolutely classic one was when in April last year I asked for information relating to the establishment of a hospice at or near Calvary Hospital. I put that request in to both the department and Mr Berry's office. The department thought it was in the public interest and remitted fees; but Mr Berry did not think it was in the public interest, so he did not. It would seem that there is a bit of an obvious - - -
Mr De Domenico: An argy-bargy between the Minister and his department.
MRS CARNELL: I do not think the Minister speaks to his department. Obviously, what the Minister believes is in the public interest and what the department believes are two different things. In fact, there is an obvious conflict between the Minister and his department. I am sure that the Minister got exceedingly cross about that.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .