Page 1643 - Week 05 - Thursday, 5 May 2016
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
There will also be greater accountability for the administration of the FOI scheme. The Chief Minister and the Ombudsman will be required to prepare a report to the Assembly each year on the operation of the act. Information about the operation of the FOI act must be included in ministers’ annual reports to the Assembly. The relevant minister will also be required to notify the Assembly each time that an access application is not decided within the permitted time frame.
Exemptions or exclusions from the public right of access to government information are ultimately what dictate the effectiveness of any FOI scheme. Consequently they are also the most contentious part of any FOI act. Information that the Assembly has deemed to be contrary to the public interest, and therefore which is not subject to the public interest test, is set out in schedule 1 to the bill.
The categories of information deemed to be contrary to the public interest to disclose are intended to be cast as narrowly as possible and relate only to specific and defined information rather than to broad classes of information. The exemptions include information that would be in contempt of court, cabinet information, protected information, identities of people making disclosures, security documents and various private records.
For the most part the reasons for the inclusion of each item in the schedule are self-explanatory. They protect vulnerable members of the community and essential public interests that necessitate non-disclosure.
In some cases there are alternative methods of access to the information. For example, information relating to audit reports of the Auditor-General is deemed to be contrary to the public interest but the information provided by agencies to the Auditor-General will remain available directly from the agency itself. There is already a process within the Auditor-General Act for the Auditor-General to release information to the community where it is in the public interest to do so.
The Greens do not believe that the intelligence services should be above scrutiny. National security is an amorphous term that while, of course, at its core is an important pursuit is also often used by governments to hide behind and as a means to inappropriately intrude on the private rights of their citizens.
A significant addition to the schedule from the exposure draft of the bill released for public comment some time ago is cabinet information where the release of the information would prejudice cabinet solidarity. The purpose of exempting cabinet information is to promote frankness and the capacity of the cabinet to consider the full range of issues and options before it without having to be concerned about a public perception that may be generated from merely considering an idea or option.
It is this underlying purpose that the exemption is designed to cover and no more; it is not a blanket exemption for anything that has been considered by the cabinet. For example, where a decision is made and acted upon and the release of information relating to that decision would have no consequence for cabinet solidarity, then it will be subject to the public interest test. It is worth noting that triple bottom line
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video