Page 2800 - Week 08 - Thursday, 11 August 2016
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Amendment agreed to.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Health, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Environment and Climate Change) (4.52): I move amendment No 60 circulated in my name [see schedule 2 at page 2854] which deals with national or state information.
Amendment 60 provides clearly and expressly that information, which, if disclosed, would or could reasonably be expected to damage the security of the commonwealth, the territory or a state, is taken to be information that is contrary to the public interest to disclose. This adopts the scope of existing national security exemptions in section 37A of the FOI Act which the government considers are necessary and appropriate to ensure that national security is not compromised by release of highly classified or sensitive information which may arise outside the other categories of security information for non-disclosure in schedule 1 of the FOI Bill.
The amendment mirrors the drafting of the national or state security information provision in clause 9 of schedule 3 of the Queensland Right to Information Act, but also covers security information of the territory. It defines what matters may be relevant to the security of the commonwealth, territory and states and includes prevention of activities hostile to Australia, its state or territory interests or those of its allies. It also covers information that relates to the security of communication systems that are used in defence of Australia or the conduct of international relations.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.54): The Greens will not be supporting this amendment. We believe that the government amendment is too broad. The protections in the bill are sufficient to protect the information that should not be in the public domain. Common sense would tell you that the public interest test would have prevented the disclosure of any information that endangered public safety; that is the very architecture of the bill.
I believe the risk with the government amendment is that it will hide from public scrutiny the actions of security and law enforcement agencies that are not in the public interest and that should be the subject of public debate. There is a clear ability here for people like the Ombudsman and the tribunal to determine this sort of test. It is common sense. The agencies would clearly have the opportunity to make their case as to why a piece of information would endanger public safety. We need to draw a clear distinction between information that would endanger public safety and information that might embarrass an agency. These are two different things. The latter category does not endanger public safety, even if it might make some in an agency feel uncomfortable or put them in a position where their policy decisions or their operational methods or something like that might be legitimately publicly debated.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.56): The Canberra Liberals will be supporting the attorney’s amendment on this occasion. We believe it is important that national, territory and state security information is maintained. Contrary to what Mr Rattenbury would say, the essential nature of security organisations is that they do not conduct themselves in the glare of public scrutiny and they would be undermined in their actions if they did.
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