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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 3327 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

I much prefer that model to one of a government hiding in a cave somewhere in the Brindabellas where you need a map, compass and spotlight to find them.

And as soon as you find them, they quickly move caves.

For me personally, this reform has become something of a marathon, and it appears there is still much running to do.

When I tabled this Bill on the first Private Member's day of this Assembly, I stated that it had been a long time in the workshop, but was not yet complete.

I anticipated a comprehensive committee process that cobbled together community input and expert advice to find the best way forward to reform.

While it is the recommendation of the committee to not pass the Bill for various reasons, I still consider the Bill has achieved an important goal.

Freedom of information is not about keeping secrets.

Rather, it should assist in the promotion of, and participation in, informed decision-making by the community.

The sensitivity of a particular issue to the government of the day ought not to be the reason for denying access to material that is critical to informed community participation. Information collected by government is a community resource.

Those who collect or produce it, do not do so for their own benefit.

Rather, they are merely trustees of that information for the people of Canberra.

Unfortunately, that is not always the attitude of the government of the day and its bureaucracy.

When I first began to consider this reform in 1995, I was struck with the complexity of our FOI Act.

Traditionally, around the world, FOI law starts out being very simple, and then is gradually made more complicated as successive governments bring forward amendments to suit themselves.

As an Act that is meant to provide easy access to a wide range of government information, our current Act it is a dismal failure.

We inherited a cut-and-paste version of the Commonwealth FOI Act, complete with a large number of creative exemptions and that favourite catch-all phrase when all else fails "not in the public interest".

Unfortunately, in the hands of a self-protecting . bureaucracy, "not in the public interest" is inevitably reinterpreted "not in the government's interest".

Since tabling this,latest version of the Bill, there have been some baby steps towards reform.

Mr Moore picked out of it a process to release Executive documents and the Government recently announced the removal of various fees.

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