Page 4455 - Week 14 - Thursday, 28 November 2013
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has at times made significant steps forward. Unfortunately, however, more often public access to government information has been thwarted. All too often governments simply assert that they know best, they are dismissive and discourteous, and they are often more eager to hide from the community than govern it.
The irony is that in fact it is in any good government’s best interests to do the exact opposite; their insecurity sows the mistakes that they are later forced to reap. Mistakes could easily be avoided if only they were forthright enough to give the community a real chance to participate in the decisions that are supposed to be made in their best interests.
It is in that spirit that I am asking the community to provide their feedback on an exposure draft of a bill that I will present to the Assembly to make our government undoubtedly the most transparent and accountable in the country, up there with anyone in the world. The draft bill is modelled on the Queensland Right to Information Act 2009, with some important changes and innovations that respond to expert recommendations that have been made from many inquiries over many years.
We are all aware of examples where our current FOI Act simply fails when it is needed most. The aim of the draft bill is to rectify these shortcomings and ensure that when it really matters information is made available to the community. In 2009 the New South Wales Ombudsman presented a special report on freedom of information. The foreword to the report begins:
Everyone should be able to access the information their government holds quickly, easily, at minimal cost and subject to few restrictions.
The report also says:
… Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation is a cornerstone of democratic, open government. It aids citizen participation and ensures government decision-makers are held to account for their actions.
The underlying purpose of the draft bill is to achieve those two goals and give the community a meaningful and enforceable right to access government information far beyond the limited right they currently enjoy, because the indisputable fact is that the best decisions are made when those making the decisions know that they will be subject to greater public scrutiny.
Former High Court judge Michael Kirby described the historical problem that the bill was designed to overcome. He wrote:
Australian public administration inherited a culture of secrecy traceable to the traditions of the counsellors of the Crown dating to the Norman Kings of England. Those traditions were reinforced in later dangerous Tudor times by officials such as Sir Francis Walsingham. They were then strengthened by the enactment throughout the British Empire of official secrets legislation. A pervasive attitude developed “that government ‘owned’ official information”. This found reflection in a strong public service convention of secrecy. The attitude behind this convention was caricatured in the popular television series Yes Minister in an aphorism ascribed to the fictitious Cabinet Secretary, Sir Arnold Robinson: “Open Government is a contradiction in terms. You can be
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