Page 2752 - Week 08 - Thursday, 11 August 2016
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the principal officer will be on the agency. If further clarity is needed around who is the agency for certain entities this can be defined in guidelines to be made under the act.
The proposed role of the information officer in part 3 of the bill is to deal with access applications, to ensure that the agency meets its obligations to publish information and to consider how public access may be given to information held by the agency. The part provides that the principal officer of an agency must appoint a person to this role by notifiable instrument. The part further clarifies that information officers are not subject to direction and may consult with other information officers.
The role of information officer adds to the complexity of the bill and is unnecessary. This role will generate confusion as the role of information officer is an amalgamation of a number of different types of roles currently in the public service. The new role combines non-statutory processing officers and non-statutory governance roles and statutory decision-makers. These are roles that are currently performed by different people at different levels across directorates. Combining these into one statutory role is unnecessary and will muddy the decision-making process.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (12.12): The Greens will be opposing these amendments. Information officers are a vital part of the scheme proposed in the bill. The creation of the role of information officer will promote expertise and reduce the delay in processing applications. This is an important mechanism to encourage consistency of decision-making and collegiality between information officers and to help ensure a correct and timely response to FOI applications.
Mr Corbell has made the case that the different terms are used inconsistently. I simply do not believe that that is the case. I think that that is a misinterpretation of the bill and, particularly given that this bill has been drafted by PCO who have gone through many drafts, I think that these concerns will have been ironed out through the drafting process.
In the case of agency information officers making the decision on applications, the principal officer can direct that information must be disclosed but cannot direct that information is not to be disclosed. So I believe the delimitation of responsibility is very clear. The only significant roles that principal officers have under the bill are to appoint information officers, to request that information officers from other agencies assist the agency with its functions under the bill and an annual reporting obligation which has been harmonised with the general annual reporting obligation of the agency. The role of the principal officer under the Territory Records Act scheme is also referred to in the bill because this is an existing responsibility of principal officers.
I trust that explanation makes the operation of this part of the act clearer and I believe that the concerns raised by Mr Corbell are not in fact the case and that there will be clarity as agencies implement the legislation.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (12.14): The Canberra Liberals will be opposing this tranche of amendments. I do not believe that there is such opacity in the legislation as the attorney would claim and, quite frankly, the elimination of the notion of an
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