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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 2 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 356 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
On page 5 the Auditor refers to the lack of consultation with applicants about the scope and nature of requests, even when such consultation was clearly of benefit. In other words, Mr Speaker, requests were dealt with without consultation with applicants about what they actually wanted. No assistance was offered. This was actually worse than simply taking no action to assist.
Page 17 of the report relates to the time when Mr Humphries, was I think, Treasurer and Attorney-General, the first law officer and responsible for the administration of these things. The report states:
Taken together, the Bruce Stadium requests-
how about this condemnation from the Auditor-General about a government-
suggest a concerted effort to thwart the applicant in his efforts to gain information on a matter of significant public interest.
This is the attitude of the previous government to the administration of the FOI Act. I will repeat what the Auditor-General said:
Taken together, the Bruce Stadium requests suggest a concerted effort to thwart the applicant in his efforts to gain information on a matter of significant public interest.
While the actual decision-maker in those requests was a departmental officer, it was not in those officers' direct interests to make "a concerted effort to thwart" the applicant. The persons who had a direct interest were, of course-and this is not a quote-the ministers of the day. As always, the Auditor-General is circumspect in how he approaches the sensitive issue of laying blame, and so he does not point the finger but simply says the applicant was thwarted in his efforts to gain information on a matter of significant public interest.
When requests were answered, reasons statements were often cursory and unhelpful and in other ways inadequate. Internal reviews did not bring a better result, as shown in this quote from the Auditor-General:
All four reviews [ie internal reviews conducted by Treasury, apparently in relation to politically sensitive matters] had major flaws in process.
We are talking here about the time the other party was in government. They had major flaws in process. The quote continued:
In one case, if the Department's view is accepted that an internal review took place, then the review was conducted by the original decision maker. This would be contravention of the Act. In the other three, a reasons' statement was not provided, and the available documentation suggests that no serious review was undertaken by the decision maker. The two internal reviews in regard to the Bruce Stadium requests ... were ... cursory.
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