Page 665 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
on the back of it as an appendix, you will create a situation where you may never be able to even consider the release of that document because it is in a blue book or because it is in a question time brief or an estimates brief. This is not the time for making these decisions. As I have said before, the Canberra Liberals will be prepared to discuss these issues openly and forthrightly in an inquiry and we will take the advice of the inquiry about where we should proceed on this.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.29): I say up front that the Greens will not be supporting this proposed amendment by the Attorney-General. I have great trouble accepting the proposition that public servants cannot be expected to be sufficiently professional in their advice, such that their briefings need to be protected from public scrutiny. We all know that particularly defamatory, embarrassing and sensitive information gets transmitted over the telephone or in face-to-face briefings. I would have thought that existing exemption provisions cover anything in these documents that would legitimately be described as being in the public interest to be kept secret.
Incoming briefs which give a snapshot of the state of a ministerial portfolio are exactly the kind of factual information that should be publicly available. I imagine that these briefs would be full of facts and figures, and that is exactly the type of consolidated information that would enable a member of the public to get a good insight into the state of the territory or a particular portfolio and therefore enable them to judge government decisions in light of that more complete and more useful information.
Many of my following comments are relevant to all of the government’s proposed amendments which will come up through the course of this debate, and I will make them in one broad statement now. The need for so many conclusive certificate provisions did not occur to the original drafters of freedom of information acts, including those in Australian jurisdictions. That is because they had faith in the many exemption categories and the capacity of the courts and tribunals to review government decisions and identify the public interest and other legitimate grounds for withholding documents. The government has argued strenuously that there are all manner of public documents that should never be released under the Freedom of Information Act and that the Freedom of Information Act cannot be relied upon to ensure that they will not be released.
For the information of members, and members of the public, I am now going to read into Hansard the breadth of the existing exemption categories that are available to the government and its agencies when they feel that the public interest would be served by withholding the release of a document. They are numerous, and I cannot accept that they do not provide an adequate balance between the public interest in having access to public information and the public interest in ensuring that public servants in governments feel that they can comment professionally and honestly.
The Attorney-General’s in-principle speech gives the impression that, without his amendments, all documents will be released under the FOI Act, without any consideration being given to whether there are legitimate reasons for not releasing them. Given the number and range of exemption provisions, this is a hard argument to accept. The exemption provisions start at section 32 of the FOI Act and, as the list I
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .