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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 357 ..
Mr Stanhope: Have you got public servants digging out your question time for you?
MR SPEAKER: Would you be quiet, please, Mr Stanhope?
MR HUMPHRIES: I will come back to the origin of this document, Mr Stanhope, if you would like to hear about it and you have to ask about it. We had a culture which resulted in the delay of processing applications for remission of fees as a device to allow the time to be extended before a person had to have information supplied to them under FOI - what you might well call a curtain of secrecy, a veil of secrecy, pursued as a matter of agency policy. That is reprehensible conduct, the sort of thing this Government would get censured for if it came to light. You can imagine what would be said about it.
But there is more. There is information about how the former Government manipulated the FOI process to suit its own political advantage. I quote again from the same document:
The Attorney's request that all applications for remission of application fees from members -
that is, members of the Legislative Assembly -
be decided by the Minister concerned will be implemented immediately.
Ms Carnell: And Wayne always charged me.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is right. Mrs Carnell recalls that Mr Berry always charged her for the release of information. The minute goes on to say:
We assume that the policy enunciated by successive Governments, as reported in each of the FOI Annual Reports, that applications for remission of fees on the grounds of public interest from Members of the Assembly should be decided by the decision-makers on their individual merits, now no longer applies.
Those opposite often accuse us of interfering in the process of considering FOI applications. The reason they make that accusation of us is that, under their Government, every FOI request from a member of the Assembly was dealt with personally by a Minister. Under this Government we take the spirit of the FOI Act seriously and such applications are dealt with routinely at arms length from the Government. Do not snigger, Mr Corbell. Under your Government, as a matter of policy, you had political influence on the decision-making in these matters. Under your Government decision-making on FOI requests was done politically, not on the basis of their individual merits by the decision-maker, as required by the Act.
Mr Moore: It was much more secretive than what happens now.
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